Icelanders Hurl Eggs at Parliament in Mass Protests

By Omar R. Valdimarsson - Oct 5, 2010 12:21 PM ET

Iceland’s police sealed off the country’s parliament with a five-foot steel fence to protect lawmakers as protestors gathered in their thousands, beating makeshift drums and hurling red paint at the legislature.

As many as 8,000 people protested outside the Reykjavik- based Althingi last night, according to a police estimate, as Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir presented her key policy objectives to lawmakers. Protestors lit a bonfire and threw firecrackers at police while others threw eggs, tomatoes and paint at the parliament as they tried to break through the steel fence protecting the building.

Sigurdardottir, who convened a Cabinet meeting today to address the protests, is working on measures to help households restructure debt, she told reporters today. Finance Minister Steingrimur J. Sigfusson said banks need to do more to restructure homeowners’ debt burdens, at the same press conference.

The protests were designed to disrupt the Prime Minister’s first speech to lawmakers since parliament convened for the autumn session this month. Her government, in office since January 2009, is still struggling to resurrect the economy after its banking meltdown a year earlier plunged the island into a crisis that sent the krona down as much as 80 percent against the euro offshore. The island has since relied on a $4.6 billion International Monetary Fund-led loan to stay afloat.

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