The Greenlandic party Naleraq has criticised the Greenlandic government for delaying the process of Greenlandic independence with a commission. A criticism that senior researcher Ulrik Pram Gad supports.

The Greenlandic government, Naalakkersuisut, is trying to postpone the independence process from Denmark.

This is the criticism from the Greenlandic party Naleraq, after the government approved the terms of reference for the so-called §21 commission, which will spend the next year, among other things, clarifying the legal process behind section 21 of the Greenland Self-Government Act, which shows the way to independence for Greenland.

But that process has already been fully clarified and described, Naleraq believes, and therefore it is just a way to delay the process. The party’s criticism has been mentioned by the media Sermitsiaq, as has Kuno Fencker, a member of the Greenlandic parliament for Naleraq, who has also stated this to RADIO IIII.

And now Ulrik Pram Gad, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and a researcher into Greenland’s relations with Denmark and the world, is backing the party in his criticism. This happened in an interview in “Morgen” on Radio IIII:

“I think Kuno Fencker is right that what the commission has been set up for, we already know.”

“The commission’s work costs a total of two million kroner. But it is too early to say whether that money has been wasted,” says Ulrik Pram Gad.

“But basically, paragraph 21—and on top of that, the comments in the autonomy report from 2008—describe how Greenland can formally negotiate with Denmark about how to become independent. So that part has been resolved,” he explains.

Ulrik Pram Gad emphasises, however, that Greenland needs to make its negotiating position clear and find out exactly how independence should develop in practice.

But according to him, this is an area that the §21 Commission has not been asked to shed light on by the government.

“The way the question has been put to the commission, you are not actually supposed to deal with the substance.”

“You are supposed to describe the legal process there. And it is quite clear,” he says, emphasising that Naleraq’s suspicion that the Greenlandic government is trying to postpone a potential independence process with the commission is reasonable.

RADIO IIII has tried to get a comment from the Prime Minister of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen (Democratic Party), but he has not yet returned.

Source: Sermitsiaq (in Danish)