Navarsete asks the person who sent the cabin trip SMS to appear – NRK Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
– The notification routines have been bad since day one, says Liv Signe Navarsete to NRK.
On Tuesday, former Minister of Local Government Bjørn Arild Gram (Sp) was appointed as the new Minister of Defense. It happened after former Minister of Defense Odd Roger Enoksen (Sp) had to resign, as a result of VGs revelation that he had had a sexual relationship with a young woman while he was a minister.
The week before, NRK was able to tell the story of former SP politician Hilde Lengali, who had delivered a formal warning against the then Minister of Defense Odd Roger Enoksen. The events are 20 years back in time, while Enoksen was party leader.
After these cases, there has been a lot of attention around the Center Party’s routines for handling alerts.
In light of these incidents, there was a lot of focus on Tuesday that the new Minister of Defense was one of the eight SP men who were present on the much talked about cabin trip in 2016, where a very rough message was sent to former SP leader Liv . Signe Navarsete.
The message said “We want your pussy.”
It is still not known who sent the message. Minister of Research and Higher Education Ola Borten Moe (Sp) was also on the cabin trip.
Navarsete hard against the Center Party’s warning routines
Now Navarsete is sharply criticizing the Center Party’s warning routines. She believes it is vulnerable that only the party’s general secretary, Knut M. Olsen, will handle the notification cases that come in.
– It is far too flimsy that only one person should sit on all the information. In addition, there should be at least one woman among those who handle the alerts, she says.
She provides support to the Center Women, who recently told NRK that they want a woman to be involved in handling alerts in the party.
– That you can only notify one man helps to raise the threshold for notifying. The threshold for notifying is basically very high, I have felt that myself, says Navarsete.
After the cabin trip case came up in 2018, Navarsete criticized the Center Party’s treatment of the warning, which she believed was «Miserable handling».
Asks the SMS sender to come forward
Six years after Navarsete received the rude message, it is still not known who the sender was. Now she asks the person to take responsibility and stand up.
– Being open and honest about the truth is entirely thanks to the trust in politicians, she says.
– Therefore, the person who sent the cabin trip SMS must take responsibility and stand up. As long as no one takes responsibility, trust in everyone is weakened, she says, and at the same time points out that everyone who was on the cabin trip has the suspicion hanging over them.
She herself says that she no longer thinks about this matter.
– But it obviously lives on in Norwegian society because no one has taken responsibility and thus put the case to death. We can not know what the truth is as long as no one takes responsibility, says Navarsete.
Gram was confronted with the cabin trip at yesterday’s press conference.
– What I want to say is that I did not send that message, and do not know who sent it. I think it’s unfortunate that someone was so stupid and sent that message.
– Should the person who did it stand up?
– Yes, of course, but it did not happen, Gram answers.
In an interview with NRK, Gram repeats that it was not he who sent the message to Liv Signe Navarsete.
– First and foremost, it is very broken for Liv Signe Navarsete who received that message, it should of course never have been sent. It’s just to apologize and be sorry for. I do not know anything more about how it happened, says Gram.
Receives support from Sp-top
In an e-mail to NRK, Marit Arnstad, central board member and parliamentary leader of the Center Party, explains why the warning system today only consists of one person.
– The reason why notifications are not shared with a larger circle is that the notifier must be confident that the case is kept confidential if the person in question so wishes, says Arnstad.
She nevertheless allows the notification system to be modern for changes.
– The center women have now proposed that notifications be received by both a man and a woman. It is a proposal that it is natural that the central board of the party considers, she says.
The SP top provides support for Navarsete, and believes that the SMS sender should make himself known.
– I agree with Liv Signe that the person who sent this SMS should appear. Unfortunately, this has not happened, Arnstad concludes.
NRK repeatedly tried last week to get a comment from the Center Party’s general secretary, Knut M. Olsen, regarding the Enoksen case. There are still a number of questions he has not answered.
In an e-mail to NRK, he writes, among other things:
“Whistleblowers have expressed that they are happy that as few people as possible know about the cases. The ethical guidelines the national board has adopted give clear guidelines for how I, as Secretary General, should handle notifications. “