00:00This is Apropos.
00:04It's shaping up to be Greenland's most closely-watched election ever.
00:09Voters on the world's biggest island,
00:11a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark,
00:13are heading to the polls to choose a new parliament this Tuesday.
00:17The snap ballot was called after Donald Trump doubled down
00:20on his ambitions for the United States to acquire the Arctic island.
00:24Our senior reporter, Clovis Casale, is there.
00:30A snowstorm approaches Nuuk,
00:32and Jess Bertelsen takes a short break at his office
00:35before heading out for more campaigning.
00:39The long-time leader of Greenland's main labor union
00:42is running for the first time in a general election.
00:45Why? Because of Donald Trump.
00:51Three months ago, we woke up to a completely different world.
00:55We don't know where we stand,
00:56The country that has been our ally and protected us for years
01:00suddenly said it could take our land by force.
01:02It's worrying.
01:10He wants his semi-autonomous island
01:12to have strong cooperation with Denmark and Europe
01:16instead of turning towards the United States.
01:20He fears for the Greenlandic social model
01:23if President Trump manages to get his hands on this island
01:26in the Arctic.
01:30I'm not doing this for me.
01:32If I'm running in this election,
01:33it's for my children and grandchildren.
01:37I want to make sure they have a good life
01:39when I'm no longer on this earth.
01:44Never before has an election here attracted so much attention
01:47from around the world.
01:49It's overwhelming for many Greenlanders used to a quiet life.
01:54They were shocked to hear Donald Trump
01:55say he would have their island one way or another.
01:59This engineer who likes the US president was surprised.
02:02I don't know what exactly he's thinking about
02:05using the words have Greenland.
02:07In Greenland, we can use land for a certain purpose
02:11like building a house or maybe a school,
02:15you know, but you can't own the ground.
02:19It's very scary for me
02:21because we don't want this life on the outside
02:28and I don't want to be in the USA.
02:33If Donald Trump wants Greenland,
02:35it's for its fabulous natural and mineral resources
02:38as well as its strategic location in the Arctic.
02:40The people here know it and according to a poll,
02:4385% of them are opposed to the idea
02:46of being part of the United States.
02:50For more on what's at stake,
02:51we're joined now by Matt Gvortrup,
02:53Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Studies
02:56at the Australian National University.
02:58Matt, thanks so much for being with us.
03:00Firstly, we got an idea from that report there,
03:04but how completely has Donald Trump
03:06overshadowed this election campaign?
03:10This has been the main issue of the election campaign.
03:14In fact, there's been no other issue
03:16and it's also sort of firmed up the position
03:19of a number of parties.
03:21Traditionally, there have been parties
03:22that were opposed to independence,
03:25but those parties have been now reduced to one party,
03:28the Atasut party,
03:30which is a sort of conservative party traditionally.
03:34So all the political parties in one way or other
03:38are now in favour of independence.
03:40So that issue has defined it,
03:42but it's also created a kind of unity.
03:45The issue now is how quickly it will go
03:48so the AI party, Inuit Afrikaafelit party,
03:53is in favour of independence as soon as possible,
03:56whereas the Sioumoud party
03:58and those two parties are in coalition together.
04:01The Sioumoud party has flip-flopped a little bit.
04:04They changed their opinion,
04:05so they wanted to have independence,
04:07and now they want a commission to look at the possibilities
04:11before there can be a referendum.
04:14The thing here is that,
04:15a little bit like New Caledonia, in fact,
04:18there's been an agreement
04:19with the metropolitan Denmark and Greenland
04:23that there can be a referendum at any time,
04:26that the people in Greenland want that,
04:29but the people in Greenland currently are benefiting
04:32from a so-called block grant from Denmark
04:35where they get money,
04:36and that's going to be phased out
04:38as they get more resources out of the ground,
04:41and that's been a little bit slow.
04:43So when Trump is talking about getting the resources,
04:47the resources are actually pretty hard to get,
04:50and the other thing that Trump's talking about, of course,
04:52is taking control of it.
04:53There's already a very large army base
04:57and an airport base in the north of Greenland
05:01that the Americans have been using since the 1950s.
05:04Not always, in a way,
05:06that's been beneficial to the Greenlanders.
05:08They have, there's been a lot of sort of,
05:10even nuclear waste has been there,
05:12and they dropped a hydrogen bomb there accidentally
05:17in the 50s, which led to a lot of pollution
05:19and people were forced out of the land.
05:21So the Americans have actually not really made,
05:25have not really acted in a way
05:28that would be beneficial to the Greenlanders,
05:32and those things that happened in the 50s
05:34have cast a long shadow over the relationship.
05:37So a lot of people in Greenland, and for good reason,
05:40have been upset with the Americans.
05:42And what are the main political parties then saying
05:45about Donald Trump's approach to Greenland?
05:49And also, what are they saying
05:50about independence from Denmark?
05:53You're talking about a referendum there.
05:55Would that be inevitable at this stage?
05:57And what happens then, Matt,
05:59if people do vote to become independent from Denmark?
06:03How long would that actually take?
06:04What would the challenges be?
06:06The challenges will be that they would have to set up
06:09a whole new system, but that has happened
06:11on a number of occasions before.
06:12Iceland became independent less than 100 years ago,
06:15also independent from Denmark.
06:18Norway, of course, a little over 100 years ago,
06:21became independent from Sweden,
06:22and there was a phase-in period of that,
06:25when Iceland is probably the better example
06:28we can compare it to,
06:29because Iceland didn't have a university at first,
06:32and then they had an agreement with Denmark
06:33that people, if they wanted to become dentists,
06:36they would go to Copenhagen,
06:37and until recently they could do that.
06:39So the process of becoming an independent country
06:42can take quite a long time.
06:45I think what will happen if there is a referendum
06:47is that there will be a period of time
06:49before we get to that referendum.
06:51There will have to be an agreement about that referendum
06:54who will be able to vote in it.
06:55At the moment, it looks as if anybody
06:57who's lived in Greenland for six months or so,
07:01even if they're originally from Denmark, can vote there,
07:04but some issues have been raised over that.
07:09I think what the people in Greenland ideally would like,
07:13and I hear that from people I've spoken to in Greenland,
07:17is that they would like an independent Greenland
07:20in a united Europe.
07:21They will be turning towards the European Union.
07:24Currently, and interestingly,
07:26Greenland is not a member of the European Union.
07:29They're part of Denmark,
07:30but they're not part of the European Union.
07:32So actually, the first kind of exit
07:35from what was then the European community
07:38was happening in the early 1980s.
07:40Before that time, Greenland had been a county within Denmark.
07:44Then they got devolution,
07:46a little bit along the lines of what Scotland has today,
07:49and then they used that provisions for devolution
07:53to actually vote to leave the European communities,
07:59as it was then, but they became the European Union.
08:02So Greenland is what will happen after the election.
08:08I expect that the same government will probably continue.
08:11That will be a government that is,
08:13to different degrees, committed to independence.
08:18They will then start a process of negotiating with Denmark,
08:22but also negotiating with the European Union.
08:26A lot of people in the European Union
08:28are very interested in that,
08:30and they will probably be in pole position,
08:33especially, certainly, more popular than the Americans.
08:37So I think there is a relatively good chance
08:40that within some years,
08:42we will see an independent Greenland in a United Europe.
08:45And Matt, is there consensus at all
08:48about how to approach the relationship with the US then?
08:50Would people there be open to a deal, for example,
08:53on minerals exploration?
08:55And how worried are they by what they're hearing
08:58coming from Donald Trump
08:59about not ruling out using force, potentially?
09:03That, of course, is an outrage,
09:05and that Donald Trump is effectively behaving
09:08like Saddam Hussein was with Habib Kuwait
09:11is the thing that beggars belief.
09:13And if you are at the receiving end of that,
09:17that is incredibly scary,
09:18and people are very, very scared of that.
09:21People I've spoken to in Greenland are saying
09:25it is a completely surreal and absurd and crazy position
09:30that they've found themselves in.
09:31A lot of people in Greenland
09:33have probably suffered in many ways.
09:37In some ways, a bit like some of the islands in the Pacific
09:42where France tested their nuclear bombs.
09:45A little bit the same has happened in Greenland.
09:47The people in Greenland do not want,
09:49in any way, shape or form, to be Americans.
09:53The people in Greenland are very much on the left.
09:56The Inuit Atacatanit Party is a party
09:59which is politically a bit like Mélenchon in France.
10:03It is a party on the far left.
10:06People in Greenland are very liberal,
10:09to use an American expression,
10:11and they do not have the same belief system
10:14as the Americans have.
10:16So they really do not want to become Americans.
10:19They want to be, they want to have a welfare state,
10:24probably even like a social democratic,
10:26a left social democratic welfare state.
10:29And the ideology of the people in Greenland
10:32is completely opposite everything
10:35that people have in America.
10:37So people in Greenland have a different way
10:40of looking at things than they have in America.
10:43They are on the left,
10:45and most Americans are probably on the right.
10:47Matt, we'll have to leave it there for now.
10:49We're out of time on that,
10:51but thanks so much for being with us this evening.
10:53That's Matt Kvortrup,
10:54he's Senior Research Fellow
10:55at the Centre for European Studies
10:57at the Australian National University.
11:00Well, that's it from us for now.
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