The Conservatives are working hard to find out who will challenge the management at Oslo City Hall. This time it will not be Saida Begum (34).
Saida Begum has been in the think tank and come out again.
This week, she informed the nomination committee that she was resigning. Not only as a full-time politician, but also as a city council politician.
– I spent an extra long time on the latter, says Saida Begum.
Now she is fully committed to a lawyer career in Sands, formerly Steenstrup law firm, which was started by the Oslo Conservatives’ new county leader Morten Steenstrup.
The Conservative politician admits that it has been a difficult choice.
– It feels incredibly meaningful to be an ombudsman for the city, Begum says.
– I have been lucky to have been allowed to do so since 2011. It is starting to be very many years ago. Maybe that’s also a bit of the reason why I think now is the time to prioritize something else, and fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a lawyer.
– Change of direction
She succeeded a number of well-adult men, when in 2019 she was elected Conservative mayoral candidate in Oslo.
In a double team with Eirik Lae Solberg (city council leader candidate), she challenged the current mayor Marianne Borgen (SV) and city council leader Raymond Johansen (Labor Party). The Conservatives became the largest in the capital, but failed to regain power over City Hall.
She herself says it was a role she had certainly not imagined she would go in for, before she was asked.
– One of the reasons why I said yes, was that I wanted to give a signal to the city that the position of mayor is not reserved for older people. Anyone can become mayor of Oslo, regardless of age, gender, ethnic background. I think that is a very good signal to give. Although it did not go all the way to the mayor’s chair, it was a change of direction to nominate a young woman.
– And now the young women are disappearing again?
– We’ll have to look at that. The nomination committee will do a job here. But there is something that triggers me now as well. In the legal profession, most women go to law, but at the top, where decisions are made, there is an incredibly low proportion of women.
She believes that politics has improved on equality and diversity.
– The law industry has a long way to go. If I become a really good lawyer then maybe I can help change the industry. It is at least an ambition, she says.
Turbulence and noise
Anyone who has followed the Oslo Conservatives in recent years can not help but realize that there has been a lot of noise and personal conflicts.
Last year started with the party’s group leader in the City Council, Øystein Sundelin, being thrown out after a no-confidence motion. In the end, Oslo Conservative leader Heidi Nordby Lunde was pushed out.
Internally, it also aroused some attention that all the three women in the Conservative Party’s city council group who had worked in the government apparatus, refused to full-time positions in Oslo politics when the Conservatives lost government power.
Two of them, Camilla Strandskog and Saida Begum, both stated that they would now prioritize careers in the private business sector, while Jenny Clemet von Tetzschner continues with political work in the Storting, as an adviser to Erna Solberg.
– Good mood in the party now
Saida Begum denies that the noise in the Oslo Conservatives has affected the motivation.
– The unrest there was something I first and foremost heard about via the media. I was in the government apparatus when it happened and was not so close to the Oslo Conservatives. But since I came back, I have not noticed anything. There is a very good mood in the party now.
Even after the election defeat in 2019, she says that she only met support.
The 34-year-old continues in the program committee for the Conservative Party and the main board of the Oslo Conservative Party. Nor does she rule out a comeback later.
– I think that when you have sat for as long as elected, it can be good to take a break and get more experience from the private business community as well. Then one can possibly come back, a little wiser. I’m not closing any doors. My goal is just to fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a lawyer.
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