The harsh reality of politics, being a leader and of coalition politics is to the fore in the fifth to seventh episodes of season 1 of Borgen, the impressive Danish series about a coalition government led by the first woman political head and which has had political resonance in general.
The fifth episode centres on the attempt to establish sexual equality throughout the country, especially in the boardroom where only about 5% of Directors are female. The coalition introduces a bill to ensure that at least 45% of a board membership are woman catering for situations where the board has an uneven number of members.
Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg allocates the passage of the Bill to the Minister concerned with business, someone who she brought into the Government from outside Parliament because of proven business acumen. This decision upsets the coalition nominated Minister responsible for equality issues. The Minister expresses her strong disapproval and attempts to put her grievance on the TV 1 station but its ordered not to do so by Birgitte who reminds that she her party just got above the minimum percentage number of votes to qualify for seats in the parliament
In turn the Equality Minister makes the point that she should become a member of the central policy committee which has an uneven balance between men and woman as the committee is formed by specific Ministerial positions with a male dominance as a consequence and prophetically she says she is available to step in if the situation of need arises.
Then Birgitte is the faced with an aggressive threat by the leader of the main Danish owned company who threatens take his business interests out of the country with the loss of thousands of jobs and billions of Krone to the economy unless she drops the insistence on Boardroom equality. Birgitte does her homework with the help of Kasper and other Ministers establishes that the man is a very loyal Dane who has tea regularly with the Queen and supports a number of Danish charities, the country’s arts and other important interests. When he returns having given her 48 hours to reconsider continuing with the Bill she calls his bluff and argues that he can ensure he gets the best female directors available and show leadership by openly accepting the move and taking the initiative to make the change. He negotiates a concession on an environmental levy.
Getting his own back, in a way, it is assumed that the business leader is responsible for the leak of information about the false academic background of the Minister and that she does not possess the qualifications she has supplied to the Government and are part of her published information in Whose Who. Birgitte suggests a way out for the Minister to come clean and admit her mistake but the woman clearly does not appreciate that this matter has been uncovered and fails to make the disclosure so the Prime Minister does not have the opportunity to arrange a facing saving solution and is forced to ask for the resignation. However the Minister is allowed to resign because of the adverse publicity about her private life and moral character.
Previously the Opposition newspaper led by the former leader of the Opposition had suggested that the Minister was someone of easy virtue in the past and present despite now being married with three children. Birgitte’s husband discloses that he had slept with Minister when they were both young and drunk although given the falsity of her academic qualification there is no information about the potential fictional authenticity of this aspect of the story.
The Equality minister gain significantly from the fall of the Business Minister.
There are similarities and parallels with the seventh episode which I shall report next.
The leader of the Solidarity Party. a comparatively young woman, Birgitte previously mentored and encouraged her to go into politics, is present when a highly sensitive latest bugging device camera is found in the main room where the Party now meet.
The slimy and unscrupulous Minister of Justice cooks up a story with the head of the Secret Service that the bug was placed in the building when it was occupied by a publishing House with extreme involvements and in effect it had been forgotten to remove the device. However the Justice Minister in an interview arrange without consulting the Prime Minister with the head of he Secret service implies there have been on going matters of concern and later he discloses to the Prime Minister the existence of tape recording of a conversation at a Party when the former activist talks of kidnapping the children of the then prime Minister to agreed to support the USA/UK war intervention in Iraq. The tape is several years old and as the PM points out it was not considered grounds for taking action before. She orders the Minister not use the tape and but to put up a good show when he is questioned by the Parliament. Not only does he fail to accept responsibility and apologise but he continues to imply justification. Birgitte feels she has no alternative but to call on him to resign and suggests he goes and talks over with his family.
Instead he arrange with the head of State Security to release the tape to the TV 1 station where Katrine realises will take away from the story of th bugging and is intended to deflect public attention from he real issue, the illegal bugging of a political party
Birgitte is determined the sack the Minister but is persuaded by her trusts supporter and adviser, Bent who is the Minister of Finance, and Kasper as well as other Members of the Coalition who suggest reprimand. This is because the Solidarity Party leader did talk of kidnapping the children fo the former Prime Minister. On learning of the bugging he had launched a major attack on Birgitte and the coalition but when he heard the broadcast tape he immediately change his position defending the actions of the Justice Minister and the Secret Service. The Minister of Justice had cleverly outwitted the Prime Minister.
However she is unforgiving and saying that while she is not in a position to sack him, they will only meet formally and that she regards him as a dead Minister to be replaced at the earliest opportunity.
There is blackmail of a similar nature in the middle of these three episodes of season one when the president of an emerging twenty year old former soviet satellite neighbour of Russia visits because he is taking over the Presidency of a fictitious democratic union from Denmark. The Minister of trade with colleagues announces excitedly that the visit is the opportunity to sign a billion krone deal to supply environmental wind turbines to the visiting state. Coinciding with the state visit where in the evening there is to a state visit to the Opera with the Queen arranging a buffet in the intervals. An internationally recognised poet and freedom fighter from the visiting head of state is also holding protest meetings because of the disappearance of some 90 other dissidents and Amnesty evidence of significant abuses of the standards required for membership of he democratic body, let alone its chairmanship.
The president makes it an issue and wants the man arrested and handed over for his alleged part in the bombing of a police station which killed several senior officers as well as members of the general public. However he fails to provided evidence and when he does it is not substantial enough to automatically consent to the request, There is also concern what will happen to the man if he is send back where the evidence indicates he will immediately disappear for good.
The solution is for the dissident to leave the country but he refuses and pressure begins to mounts from all sides for the Prime Minister to take action, not just from Russian but from other members if the Democracy organisation apart from France as well across the board from political parties at home. Eventually she agrees to the arrest of the man but insists that President tells her what will happen to th man if he is handed over. The president declines and threatened not to sign the contract. Birgitte has one more trick up her sleeve.
But first I want continue to report the issue of the affect of her being the Prime Minister on her marriage and family. The husband is increasingly hostile to the demands on his life, the impact on their children and the limitations on his relationships with Birgitte. He appears to be taken an inappropriate interest in an attractive student who visits the home to ask his support and advice for an application she has made for an internship with a Bank. He uses her to buy a present for their daughter when she get A’s at school, because Birgitte is to be to do so. Throughout the episodes there are situation where it is evident the relationship is beginning to break down. The youngest child begins to wet himself.
Her divorced father comes to visit and where the parent appear to have separated because they wanted to lead different lives and where the after admits that at fist he relished he freedom but this quickly evaporated and now he had taken to excessive drinking as a consolation for the loneliness of his situation. He has never got one with her husband who claims the father in law treats him like a school master and grown upset when the man borrows his dressing gown and drinks his red wine. He makes himself useful and is adored by the grand children but eventually Birgitte is in effect forced to ask him to leave in order to try and save her relationship when the husband threatens t move into a hotel if the father in law continues to stay. As the man has told the daughter to all that she can to keep the marriage, he appreciates that the time has come for him to depart,
We also begin to appreciate more that Kasper and Katrine still have strong feelings for each other but there respective position make a relationship impossible. Kasper becomes jealous when she establishes a sexual relationship with the fitness instructor and the two come to blows when he visits one evening. Kasper is head butted after provoking the instructor into a fight and alter he claims that he does not see Katrine and the instructor becomes a real couple other than through their good sexual relationship. Katrine aware that she has not appeared in public with the young man eventually invites him to her companion at a TV \wards night. However there is an incident where he admits that he doe snot know who the Minister of Justice is or what the fuss has been about and that he had no interest in politics. Katrine cannot stand this situation as Kasper words to her begin to ring true something which the young man also understands that she looks down at his indifference to her interests and walks out of the relationship.
Katrine has been asked by her boss to arrange an interview with the Prime Minister using her known special relationship with Kasper but when she gate crashes his office he rejects her and tells the security to make sure they do not let in anyone unauthorised. The prime Minister however lets it be known that she wants to be interviewed and at the arranged end of visit press conference she asks Kasper to ensure that someone asks the last question she wants raised. He gives it to Katrine who resents being asked given the rejection and raises her own question but she reconsiders, checks the question she had stuffed in her pocket asks the visiting president if it is correct that the contract for the Wind Turbines is dependent on the extradition of the dissident. He says no and has therefore committed himself public ally, leaving the Prime Minister in the position of being able to refuse to hand over the arrested man who is allowed to then leave the country.
However the episode ends with the information that issues about the contract and then raised once the President returns to his country. The Prime Minister has forced her husband to sell the shares he has, at a lost, in the company awarded the contract before the deal is struck and the share price rockets.
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