Norway's Labour government presented its resignation to King Harald on Wednesday, leaving the business of ruling the country to a centre-right coalition five weeks after the party suffered its worst election result in nearly a century.
During an extraordinary cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg submitted his resignation to the king and advised the monarch to ask Kjell Magne Bondevik of the Christian Democrats to form a new government.
Under the Norwegian constitution, the outgoing prime minister is expected to counsel the king on his replacement.
"I am relieved that the transition has been done properly. The king has asked me to stay on until a new government has been formed," Stoltenberg said after his meeting with King Harald, adding that the new government was expected to be announced on Friday.
Earlier, Stoltenberg had announced to the single-chamber parliament, or Storting, that his government would resign after it had "become clear ... that a majority in parliament wants a change."
The Labour Party, which governed Norway throughout most of the 20th century and built the country's generous welfare state, registered its worst electoral score since 1909 in the September 10 election, garnering only 24.4 percent of votes.
According to analysts, the low score represented a protest from voters long accustomed to paying the highest taxes in the world yet dismayed at the worsening quality of health care and education.
Tapping into that frustration, the center-right parties won increasing electoral favor with pledges to improve public services, while simultaneously cutting taxes and using more of the country's vast oil wealth to make up the difference.
Though Labour remains the largest single party in parliament, it has in recent weeks been preparing to hand over power as soon as the right-wing parties were able to form a parliamentary majority.
And on Tuesday evening, the far-right Progress Party announced it would lend its informal support to the "bourgeois" coalition, even though it would not be a part of it. The coalition, headed by Bondevik, consists of the Conservatives, Christian Democrats and Liberals.
With the Progress Party's 26 seats, the centre-right coalition will control 88 of the 165 seats in parliament.
The three coalition parties ran individual campaigns ahead of the election, but reached agreement on a joint political platform on October 8. The platform calls for tax cuts of at least 25 billion kroner (3.1 billion euros, 2.8 billion dollars) over four years, as well as for education reform and privatisation measures.
Bondevik was scheduled to meet with King Harald later Wednesday, when the monarch was to formally ask him to form a new government.
Bondevik, a Lutheran pastor, will thus return to the post he was forced to leave in March 2000 after an environmental dispute in parliament.
According to political observers here, the new centre-right government can expect to enjoy a certain amount of stability thanks to the support of the far-right.
"The Labour Party is now so weak that they will probably not try to bring down the new government during the legislature," a political analyst for Norway's public radio and television NRK said.
Elected for four years, the Norwegian parliament cannot be dissolved -- Oslo, (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
