Speaking of Trump at an election watch party in the capital Nuuk on Tuesday, Naleraq party member Kuno Fencker told Reuters that “he respects our right to self-determination… if he wants to invest in Greenland, he is absolutely welcome to do that.”
While the vast majority of Greenlanders support independence, they remain opposed to Trump’s overtures, according to a January poll commissioned by the Danish newspaper Berlingske and Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq.
Analysts say that the secessionist platforms of both parties may create an opening for greater U.S. influence.
The two parties will likely “try to get more investments” out of America’s interest in the island, Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College, told NBC News before the vote on Monday.
“A big victory for the Naleraq Party will be seen as a victory for Donald Trump,” he added.
Greenland’s former prime minister Múte Egede called an early election in February amid Trump’s comments that acquiring the island was vital to security interests.
“We are in the midst of a serious time. A time we have never experienced in our country,” he said at the time in a post on Facebook.
When news that his party had secured the largest voting share began to filter through, the Demokraatit leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said at an event in Nuuk that “people want change…We want more business to finance our welfare,” according to Reuters.
The 33-year-old former industry and minerals minister had previously said that the island is not for sale and rebuffed Trump’s interest, calling it a “threat to our political independence.”
The key difference between the two parties is that Naleraq’s main goal is rapid independence from Denmark, Dwayne Menezes, managing director of the London-based think tank Polar Research and Policy Initiative, told NBC News in a statement Wednesday. “For Demokraatit, it is more of an end goal,” he added.
Bolstered by American interest in mineral wealth, Naleraq has pushed for a referendum in the next four years and aims to strike a secessionist deal with Copenhagen.
But incumbent prime minister Nielsen told Reuters on Tuesday, “We don’t want independence tomorrow, we want a good foundation.”
With a coalition not yet agreed upon, the impact of the vote remains unclear for both the Trump administration and Greenland’s 56,000 citizens.
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