National Assembly (Iceland) - The National Assemblies or Forums of 2009 and 2010

The National Assemblies or Forums of 2009 and 2010

The National Assembly or National Forum of 2009 (Icelandic: Þjóðfundur 2009) was an assembly of Icelandic citizens at the Laugardalshöll in Reykjavík on November 14, 2009, organized by a group of grassroots movements such as Anthil. It was part of the Kitchenware Revolution that happened in the wake of the Icelandic financial crisis. The Forum would settle the ground for the 2011 Contitutional Assembly and was streamed by the Internet to the public.

1.500 people were invited to participate in the assembly; of these, 1.200 were chosen at random from the national registry, while 300 were representatives of companies, institutions and other groups. Participants represented a cross section of Icelandic society, ranging in age from 18 to 88 and spanning all six constituencies of Iceland, with 73, 77, 89, 365 and 621 people attending from the Northwest, Northeast, South, Southwest and Reykjavík (combined), respectively; 47% of the attendants were women, while 53% were men.

On 16th June, 2010 a Constitutional Act was accepted by parliament and a new Forum was summoned. The Constitutional Act prescribed that the participants of the Forum had to be randomly sampled from the National Population Register, “with due regard to a reasonable distribution of participants across the country and an equal division between genders, to the extent possible”. The National Forum 2010 was initiated by the government on 6 November 2010 and had 950 random participants, organized in subcommisions, which would present a 700 page document that would be the basis for constitutional changes, which would debate a future Constitutional Assembly. The Forum 2010 came into being due to the efforts of both governing parties and the Anthill group. A seven-headed Constitutional Committee, appointed by the parliament, was charged with the supervision of the forum and the presentation of its results, while the organization and facilitation of the National Forum 2010 was done by the Anthill group that had organized the first Forum 2009.