Guðmundur Franklín Jónsson

Guðmundur Franklín Jónsson (born 31 October 1963),^{[citation needed]} is an Icelandic businessman and former politician who was known to be a presidential candidate in the 2020 Icelandic presidential election.

Biography

Guðmundur was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, to Jón Bjarnason and Guðbjörg Lilja Maríusdóttir.^[1]

Commercially trained in Iceland and the US, Guðmundur worked as a stockbroker on Wall Street until the dot-com bubble burst around the turn of the millennium. From 2005 to 2008 he attended the Master's program in International Politics at Charles University in Prague. He founded a hotel in Prague, which he ran from 2002 to 2009. In 2012 he received a certificate as a tourist guide from the Icelandic tourist school Ferðamálaskóla Íslands.^[1] Since 2013 he has been manager of a hotel in Gudhjem on Bornholm, Denmark.^[2]

In 2010, Guðmundur founded the political party Right-Green People's Party,^[3] ran under his banner for Parliament in 2013, and received 1.7% of the vote.^[4] However, he was not eligible for election due to living abroad.^[5] He left the party the same year.^{[citation needed]}

In 2016, he first announced his candidacy for the presidential election, but then supported Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson when he announced that he would run for re-election. Ólafur also gave up his candidacy afterwards. Guðmundur applied for a place on the list as the Independence Party candidate for the 2016 Icelandic general election, but did not get it.^[2]

As a member of the Orkan okkar ('Our Energy') group, he fought against the transposition of the EU's Third Energy Package into national Icelandic law, which Iceland is obliged to do as a member of the EEA. In 2019, he resigned from the party in protest at the Independence Party's stance on the issue.^[2]

In the 2020 presidential election, Guðmundur was the only candidate against incumbent Guðni Th. Jóhannesson. He was re-elected with 92.2% of the votes. Guðmundur received 7.8%. He had announced that he wanted to use the powers of the presidency more than Guðni, in particular by exercising the right of veto in legislation. Guðmundur is considered a supporter of the then US President Donald Trump.^[6]

Guðmundur announced on 14 October 2020 that he intended to run in the 2021 parliamentary elections under the banner of a new party, the Liberal Democratic Party.^[7][8][9] The party took part in Iceland's 2021 general election, but failed to get into the Althing with 0.4% of the vote.^[10] After a poor result in the elections, Guðmundur announced that he would be withdrewing from politics.^[11]

References