Chairperson Logi Már Einarsson Chairperson of the parliamentary group Oddný Harðardóttir Founded 2000 Parent organization TeleTech | Secretary of the board Óskar Steinn Ómarsson Headquarters Reykjavik | |
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Vice-chairperson Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir Chairperson of the board Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir Profiles | ||
The Social Democratic Alliance (Icelandic: Samfylkingin-Jafnaðarmannaflokkur Íslands) is a social-democratic political party in Iceland. It is centre-left in alignment. It became the largest party in the Icelandic parliament after the 2009 Icelandic election, forming a coalition government along with the Left-Green Movement, until returning to opposition status after the 2013 Icelandic election. In the 2016 election it got 3 seats in the parliament.
History
The Social Democratic Alliance was born in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 1999 as an alliance of the four left-wing parties that had existed in Iceland up till then: the Social Democratic Party, the People's Alliance, the Women's List and National Awakening. The parties then formally merged in May 2000 under the name "The Alliance" (Samfylkingin). The merger was a deliberate attempt to unify the entire Icelandic centre-left into one political party capable of countering the centre-right Independence Party. The initial attempt failed however as a group of Alþingi representatives rejected the new party's platform – which was inspired by that of Tony Blair's New Labour – and broke away before the merger to found the Left-Green Movement, based on more traditional democratic socialist values as well as green politics and euroscepticism. The Icelandic Movement – Living Country merged into the party in March 2009. In February 2013 the official name of the party was changed to "The Alliance – Social Democratic Party of Iceland" (Samfylkingin – Jafnaðarmannaflokkur Íslands).
The current chair of the party is Logi Már Einarsson, who was elected as vice-chairman in June 2016. Oddný Guðbjörg Harðardóttir, was elected as chair of the party to succeed Árni Páll Árnason in June 2016 but resigned after the election results of 2016. The youth wing of the Social Democratic Alliance is Social Democratic Youth.