Netherlands, March 06: Icelanders trickled in to polling stations today for what was set to be a clear rejection of a bank repayment deal worth billions of dollars that many here consider a foreign diktat.
“I will vote ‘no’ simply because I disagree very strongly with us… having to shoulder this burden” from the 2008 collapse of the online Icesave bank, Ingimar Gudmundsson, a 57-year-old truck driver, told AFP.
Some 230,000 Icelanders are eligible to vote in today’s referendum and the first results should start coming in shortly after polls close at 2200 GMT, with final results later in the night.
The issue is whether Iceland should honour an agreement to repay Britain and the Netherlands 3.9 billion euros ($A5.88 billion).
This would be to compensate them for money they paid to 340,000 of their citizens hit by the collapse of Icesave in 2008.
According to the latest opinion poll, three quarters of voters will reject the agreement, which was passed by parliament in late December.
It went to a referendum after President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson refused to sign it into law because of public opposition.
According to Magnus Arni Skulason, a founder of the Indefence movement opposed to the deal, the agreement being voted on was “obtained through coercion, with threats from both the British and the Dutch against Iceland.”
Echoing the frustration felt by many Icelanders, he told AFP that the demanded 5.5 per cent interest rate was particularly unacceptable.
“You’re basically sending the bill to tax payers for the failure of a private bank,” he said.
A demonstration against the deal being voted on was scheduled in front of parliament for 1400 GMT (0100 AEDT).
Observers say an Icelandic refusal to repay the money could block the remaining half of a 2.1-billion dollar International Monetary Fund rescue package, as well as its European Union and euro currency membership talks.
It could also push Iceland’s credit rating over the cliff and destabilise the left wing government, which negotiated the agreement in the first place.
Reykjavik had been negotiating with London and The Hague for weeks to avert the vote, but the talks ended yesterday without a new agreement on the table.
—Agencies