Fampo, 03.06.2026
Article in Norwegian here
During the parliamentary electoral campaign in Norway 2025, there was a lot of controversy around a paid campaign by the new party Peace and Justice (FOR, acronym for Fred og Rettferdighet). The party paid for a campign where posters for the party was quite visible on the metro in Norway’s capital and largest city, Oslo. The posters presented the party with the following messages:
“No to 85 billions to war in Ukraine”
“Use the money on welfare, not war”
Relating to the controversy around this campaign, The Green Part’s (MDG) chairman, Arild Hermstad, stated that the leader of the relevant department of the city council had to act.
Hermstad said to Norway’s largest newspaper, VG:
“It may be in order, and there may be Norwegian private persons that are behind the financing of the campaign. But I find reason to be on guard, given the party’s standpoint to the war in Ukraine”.
“We have to make sure that the public sphere is not filled with messages that could be paid by foreign powers with their own agenda,” he continues.
Hermstad in particular points at the possibility of influencing the election.
“We know that Russia has got an interest in influencing elections. That was true during Brexit and elections in Poland and Romania. It is difficlt to be too careful, he says”.
The municipality of Oslo owns Sporveien, which runs public transport in Oslo. In the article, Hermstad is cited that the leader of the division of the City Council has to contribute to finding out who financed tha advertisement.
“- The City Council division leader should see if there is something they can do differently. They do not only administrate the collective traffic, but also the public sphere in Oslo”.
“- The City Council division leader must find out what they have done, and whether they can do more”.
There are rules against foreign sponsoring of Norwegian political parties in the Norwegian law regulating political parties (partiloven “the party law”), and one shall off course react towards transgressions. There is nothing in Hermstads statements that clearly indicates that he wants the City Council to censor paid ads for political parties in advance, with the delay that could cause. His remarks still begs some important questions. One can assume that Hermstad agrees that the City Council has got better thing to do than examining potential foreign financing every time a party pays for advertisement on municipal ground. One can assume that there has got to be some ground for suspicion. In this case, one can talk about suspicion based on the message. There are several people who have examining the events leading to Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and pointed at manipolative or provoking events. Most of these people do not support Russia’s warfare. Examples are the authors Lars Birkelund (also FOR’s 1. candidate in the electoral district of Hedmark in 2022) and Jacques Baud. Using the party FOR’s standpoint as a ground for suspicion thus becomes a kind of smear campaign.
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