COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark’s governing Social Democrats took out full-page ads in major newspapers on Wednesday that fuelled expectations that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will call a national election later in the day.
Many political analysts expect Frederiksen to make the announcement on Wednesday to bypass a vote of no confidence in her administration by one of her allies.
The ads show her surrounded by party leaders from both the left and right-wing blocs with a message about political cooperation including the Danish word ‘Valg’ which means both choice and election.
Asked on Tuesday evening in an interview with broadcaster DR if she would call the election on Wednesday, Frederiksen said: ” “It’s getting warmer.”
Her centre left party governs with the support of three other left-leaning parties.
If an election is not called on Wednesday, one of those parties, the Social Liberal Party, has said it will call a vote of no confidence on Thursday.
The government has faced widespread criticism over an order to cull all of the country’s farmed mink over fears that they could spread a mutated variant of the coronavirus.
It later emerged that there had been no legal basis for healthy animals to be culled.
Denmark is currently the focal point of a global political crisis after two pipelines carrying gas from Russia to Europe via the Baltic Sea last week suffered damage in what world leaders have called an act of sabotage.
In Denmark, heads of governments are free to call elections when they want, as long as they are held within four years of the previous one.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Nikolaj Skydsgaard; editing by John Stonestreet)
