The curtain falls for Kleppe (Dagsavisen)

Today Vidar Kleppe was suspended from all meetings in the Progress Party parliamentary group for the rest of the Storting period. "I regard him as a lone wolf," said party chairman Carl I. Hagen yesterday. Mr. Hagen emphasized that it was one of the grass-roots Storting members, and not one of the party leaders, who had proposed the suspension. "The majority of the group felt that they could no longer trust Mr. Kleppe," said Mr. Hagen. "I think this is a sad situation," said an obviously bitter Mr. Kleppe.

Progress Party falling apart at the seams (Dagbladet)

According to many ex-Progress Party members, getting rid of Vidar Kleppe will mean that alternative lists will be drawn up and the party will lose many votes. So far it appears that at least the counties of Hordaland, Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder will be presenting alternative lists. As early as next week representatives of several counties will meet in Oslo in order to coordinate their activities.

Affirmative action taken to higher levels (Dagsavisen)

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is celebrating International Women’s Day by making a personal request to the other government ministers to ensure that no men are given leadership positions in the government if qualified women apply for the posts. "I want to ask all government ministers to approve all high-level appointments. No men are to be appointed to leadership positions in the government without first making sure that there are not qualified women for the job," says Prime Minister Stoltenberg. He emphasizes that Norway cannot boast of its progress in the area of gender equality as long as most high-level positions in the government are held by men.

Threatening to resign (Dagens Næringsliv)

Kværner director Kjell Almskog has visited key Kværner shareholders to argue against Kjell Inge Røkke’s plan to merge the company with Aker Maritime. Mr. Almskog has hinted to the shareholders that he will resign if his strategy is not accepted. This strategy does not include a merger with Aker Maritime, which the management at Kværner feels would be a defensive move. Instead, Kværner’s greatest wish is to expand internationally in order to become one of the five to ten largest suppliers to the oil industry.

Aker maintains its position (Aftenposten)

Aker Maritime is standing firm, despite the fact that several influential shareholders are not enthusiastic about Kjell Inge Røkke’s merger plans. "I have no basis for giving other probability assessments than those that were presented last week," says head of information services Geir Arne Drangeid.

Harsh criticism (Aftenposten)

Professor Arne Jon Isachsen of the Norwegian School of Management (BI) gives very poor marks to the report produced by Pareto Securities for the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. The subject of the report was the privatization of Statoil and the sale of national oil fields, formally termed the State Direct Financial Interest (SDFI). "It’s not good enough. The report is full of vague reasoning and passages devoid of any meaning," he says.

Worth noting

• Generous severance packages offered to military personnel have led to the wholesale departure of women officers from the defence forces. Three out of four women who have applied have been granted discharges. (Aftenposten)

• A growing number of municipalities are starting to levy property taxes as a means of filling empty treasuries. Property tax is limited by law to built-up areas displaying urban characteristics, but nowhere is this criterion explicitly defined. Residents of a number of areas are considering lawsuits against local authorities. (Nationen)

• Family considerations, security, caution and a lack of role models—these were the main keywords in the results of an inquiry by Minister of Trade and Industry Grete Knudsen among women asking why so few of them started their own businesses. (Dagbladet)

• Seafood exports climbed sharply in February, but the 14 per cent growth rate had little to do with mad cows or foot and mouth disease, in the view of the Norwegian Seafood Export Council. (Aftenposten)

• Government officials manage NOK 1.6 billion in church funds, yet the Oslo Cathedral—a stone’s throw from the Government Administration Complex—is in a deplorable state of disrepair. Church officials are not allowed anywhere near these funds, which are the proceeds from the sale of agricultural and forestry lands formerly owned by the Church of Norway. Whose money is it—the Church’s or the State’s? No one knows. (Aftenposten)

• Oslo bishop Gunnar Stålsett calls on Norway’s politicians to halt the repatriation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. He fears that forced repatriation will lead to humanitarian disaster. (NTB)

Today's comment

It comes as no surprise that Vidar Kleppe was excluded from the Progress Party’s parliamentary group yesterday, and that he will quite probably be suspended from the party today. Mr. Kleppe didn’t stand a chance against the alliance of increasingly intolerant party leaders with a group of back-benchers who are now compensating for three and a half years of anonymity by posing for any television camera they can find to solemnly declare how totally disloyal and unreliable Mr. Kleppe has been. Ever since Carl I. Hagen conceived the vision of the Progress Party as the leading alternative to Labour, both in the Storting and as a senior party in a government coalition, leeway for individual views has shrunk month by month. Even though Mr. Hagen has been under inconceivable pressure in recent weeks—a predicament of his own making, by the way—he is not completely out of touch with the voters. He has realized that he has taken things too far. This is why he is taking particular care to push the back-benchers out to the front. He has repeated ad nauseam that the drive to oust Mr. Kleppe does not come from the party leadership but from the parliamentary group. Mr. Hagen and his cronies have the power to remove Mr. Kleppe, but it remains to be seen whether the national party leaders still wield enough influence over party members in Vest-Agder to prevent a full breakdown in the party in that county. (Aftenposten)