OSLO, (Reuters) – Norway’s prime minister came under pressure to resign today after an official report said police could have prevented a murder spree by far right militant Anders Behring Breivik last year that killed 77 people.
The attack, which involved a deadly bombing of central Oslo and a shooting spree at a teenage summer camp, shook the tiny nation of 5 million people, raising questions about the prevalence of far right views and the efficiency of the police.
On Monday, a government commission concluded that the country’s intelligence services and police had both made a series of crucial blunders that had allowed Breivik to carry out his crimes on July 22 2011 unimpeded.
“A more devastating verdict on our government could not have been made,” top-selling newspaper VG said today, calling in a front page editorial for Jens Stoltenberg, the prime minister, to resign.
“The government failed to protect the people because of incompetence. It would be intolerable if this didn’t have personal consequences for the people involved,” it added.
Daily DN also laid the responsibility for the failings on the prime minister, saying he had delayed approving security measures that could have prevented the attack.
On Monday, Stoltenberg accepted responsibility for the report’s findings, saying he would stay on to implement its recommendations. He declined to comment on VG’s editorial.
The resignation call and criticism are a blow for Stoltenberg’s Labour Party – its coalition government is trailing the conservative opposition in the polls little more than a year before elections.
But fallout from the report is seen as unlikely to bring down the government, which has so far successfully guided Norway’s economy through Europe’s turbulence.
“A change in political colour at the top seems very unlikely at this stage,” said Bernt Aardal, a political analyst at the Institute for Social Research.
“But it is clear that this report is not going help the government or the coalition in the upcoming elections … Their support is considerably weaker than at the last election.”
