Johan J. Jakobsen was a true center politician | Håvard Narum

Johan J. Jakobsen was not just a sophisticated center politician with everything that involves stubbornness, willingness to negotiate and targeted political craftsmanship. He was at least as high as a center politician who knew how to exploit opportunities for cooperation right and left to find solutions with him and his party.

Trønderrotter

Jakobsen's political career began as a political deputy in Senterungdom in the late 1960s. But it was after his arrival at the Storting in 1973 that he was recognized as the One of the most promising politicians of his generation.

With his roots in Namdalen, Jakobsen was trained in the powerful North-Danish Sp environment, as evidenced by his cautious attitude towards the leadership of the Danish party and former Prime Minister Per Borten. In his notes, Jakobsen writes about Borten with an obvious euphemism that "it was not always easy to be wise."

Jakobsen became the leader of the Center Party in 1979. He could have been in power two years earlier when Gunnar Stålsett fought with Per Borten. Jakobsen would have gathered the party at that time, but thanked no for his toddler's family. Jakobsen was preoccupied with narrow things, not only in politics

Parliamentary and Governmental Council

Parliament would soon become an important political scene for him rather than the party organization. At the time, Sp was predominantly on the bourgeois side, and when Kåre Willoch formed his pure right-wing government after the 1981 election victory, Sp under Jacobsen became one of the government's supporting parties in the United States. parliament.

Satisfactory position for the leader Sp results-oriented. At a performance in the Setes Valley at Pentecost in 1983, he agreed that Sp join the Willoch government. This also initiated a process in the other government support party, the Christian People's Party.

All is over with the Willoch government's expansion into a three-party majority government. Jakobsen became the Minister of Transport, a position he had for the government was welcomed by the Storting in the spring of 1986.

The election in 1989 gave rise to a bourgeois government, and Jakobsen is became a municipal minister of the Syse government. His choice of government positions was not random. Also on subsequent occasions, Sp has just given priority to these two ministries when their most prominent politicians have entered the government.

paved the way for Anne Enger

Jakobsen's second term lasted a little over a year. At the turn of the 1990s, EU resistance became much more important for Sp than government involvement. Jakobsen may not have been the most enthusiastic in this process, but his political flair indicated that the good thing was to join the trip.

Six months after the departure of the Syse government, Jakobsen left Anne's office. Enger. Clearer than most, he saw what opportunities she had as a political leader. And it soon became clear that these opportunities did not only apply to their own party but also to a powerful trans-political popular movement that paved the way for Norway to reject membership in the EU

. As leader of the largest Sp Group at Storting, from 1993 to 1997, he became a major provider for budget budgeting and other important issues with the Gro Harlem Brundtland minority government of the Labor Party.

After forming the left and the left government in 1997, Jakobsen chose to be in parliament. A government of 42 representatives out of 165 took care of its routine and agility

Counter and raus

When Johan J. Jakobsen published his memoirs in 2000, he gave the book the title "Mot Strømmen". He said how he felt that Sp's role in Norwegian politics had been and should be.

At the same time, he described Kåre Willoch as "one of the most popular politicians I've met" and he concluded that Gro Harlem Brundtland mentioned that "you could count on it briefly" .

In these characteristics, we notice a real and generous politician. Johan J. Jakobsen will be remembered as one of the leading Norwegian leaders in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

Håvard Narum is a former political commentator in Aftenposten.