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Rasmussen Faces Cartoon Fallout

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has become a symbol for Western excess in the Middle East. But he's taking a beating at home too. His handling of the Muhammad cartoon controversy was abysmal, say a growing number of domestic critics.

REUTERS

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been plagued by troubled waters.

Few politicians are as unpopular in the Arab world these days as Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. But that plunge in popularity is now spreading to Rasmussen's standing in Denmark. A vocal chorus of critics are angered by his obstinate handling of the international scandal over the anti-Muslim caricatures published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

In a recent broadside against his critics, Rasmussen accused his detractors in the media, business and cultural communities of not having provided him with sufficient support during the crisis because they were "unprincipled," hypocritical or were obsessed with profits. Danish businesses lost hundreds of millions of euros after a boycott was levied against the country's products in the Muslim world. Rasmussen even threw the bible at critics, saying the goats must be separated from the sheep in defending democracy -- a reference to the Last Judgement in which only the sheep would be taken to paradise. The prime minister also dismissed protests against him as "hatred" towards his government and compared media criticism to his country's capitulation to the Nazi occupation in 1940.

Business leaders, especially, are outraged by Rasmussen's tirades. Rasmussen has "lost touch with reality," executives are saying. Even friends within his party and his government's conservative coalition partner are warning him against using "unecessarily strong rhetoric" or "stoking a domestic political crisis." Cabinet members including Defense Minister Soren Gade and Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard have publicly distanced themselves from Rasmussen. And the leader of Denmark's opposition Social Liberal party, Marianne Jelved, called his response "arrogant, dangerous and holier than thou," and accused him of dividing the country over the caricature issue.

So far, the clear winner of Rasmussen's wrath is the right-wing populist Danish People's Party. A recent public opinion poll indicated that 18.2 percent of Danes would vote for the party, noted for its anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric -- up from 13.3 percent in last year's general election. But Rasmussen's own Liberal Party is down in the polls, falling 1.9 points to 37.4 percent

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