Villy Søvndal

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Villy Søvndal
Leader of the Socialist People's Party
Incumbent
Assumed office  April 2005
Preceded by	Holger K. Nielsen
Member of Parliament
Incumbent
Assumed office  1 August 1994
Born	4 April 1952 (1952-04-04) (age 57) Linde, Denmark
Political party	Socialist People's Party
Spouse(s)	Laila Rifbjerg

Villy Søvndal (born 4 April 1952) is a Danish politician and the present leader of the Socialist People's Party. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1994 and was elected as party Chairman in 2005, replacing Holger K. Nielsen.

Early life

Søvndal is the son of the smallholder Peter Søvndal and his wife Agnes. Søvndal earned a degree from the Kolding teacher-training college in 1980.

He worked as a teacher in Kolding from 1980 to 1992.

Political career

Søvndal has himself ascribed his political commitment to experiences in his youth as a backpacker in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Villy Søvndal became a member of parliament in 1994 where he became party spokesman on defence and social politics. Before he became a member of parliament he served as a city councillor in Kolding where he was chairman of the social committee for many years.

Since he became chairman his party's has experienced an almost constant rise in the opinion polls and in the 2007 election the Socialist People's Party gained 13 % of the vote and 23 seats in parliament compared to the 11 seats they had before.

Niels Krause-Kjær the former spin doctor of the conservative parliamentary group gave the following reason for Søvndal's success in the newspaper Nordjyske Stiftstidende on august 26. 2007:

The command of the quick and well-timed one-liner is of enormous significance with the dominance of the TV media. Nobody really thought Søvndal had that ability when he took over as leader of The Socialist People's Party but that proved to be all wrong.He had been labelled as a slightly dull politician but when these limitations fell he had a fling. He enjoys the role as political leader and has a fling nobody had believed before,

In March and February 2008 a lot of attention was focused on Søvndal and his party after he had released harsh statements on anti-democratic Islamist organisations in Denmark on his blog. For several weeks the party were doing better than the Social Democrats in the polls and other polls showed that Søvndal was seen as the leader of the opposition by more people than the social democratic leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

Today the main political strategy of Villy Søvndal and the Socialist People's Party is to form a coalition cabinet with the Social Democrats and the Social Liberal Party with Helle Thorning-Schmidt as prime minister. Some critics both inside and outside the party accuse Søvndal of having moved his party too far to the centre to achieve this goal. However he remains unchallenged as chairman.

Personal life

Villy Søvndal has three children with Laila Rifbjerg to whom he used to be married. He divorced Laila and choose to live with Pernille Frahm, who is also a member of parliament for the Socialist People's Party, for several years. In 2007 he and Laila moved back together.

Today he lives with Laila Rifbjerg in a multi-occupied house in Bjert outside of Kolding.

The biography "Villys Verden" about Søvndal came out in 2008.

His daughter Anna Sofia Rifbjerg Søvndal is also involved in politics. In 2007 she was elected chairman of the Kolding branch of the Youth of the Socialist People's Party.

External links

• CV (in Danish) - From Folketinget.
• Biography (in Danish) from the website of the Socialist People's Party].
• Søvndal's blog (In Danish)

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