Guri Melby
Guri Melby (born 3 February 1981) is a Norwegian politician for the Liberal Party. She has served as the party leader since 2020 and Minister of Education from 2020 to 2021. Career. Local politics. From 1999 to 2006 she was a member of the municipal council in Orkdal, and a member of the city council in Trondheim from 2007 to 2011. She was Venstre's top candidate in South Trøndelag in the elections for the Storting on 14 September 2009. Parliament. She was a deputy member of the Parliament of Norway from Oslo for the terms 2013-2017  and 2017–2021. When Trine Skei Grande was appointed to Solberg's Second Cabinet in 2018 Melby moved up to full representative. In 2019, she and Petter Eide from the Socialist Left Party, demonstrated at Eidsvolls plass during the Norwegian reception of Li Zhanshu, the chairman of the National People's Congress's Standing Committee. Melby and Eide were asked to take off their yellow T-shirts with the inscription "freedom" in Norwegian and Mandarin before they could enter the Storting. Melby stated afterwards that it was "at best naive of the Storting to accept that our democratic rules are deceived  by a manipulative system, at worst we have allowed ourselves to be dictated, and that is even worse". Oslo City Commissioner. From October 2013 to 2015, she served as the Oslo city commissioner for public transport and environmental affairs. She took over from Ola Elvestuen, who had been elected to Parliament following the 2013 parliamentary election. She was succeeded by Lan Marie Nguyen Berg after the coalition was defeated following the 2015 local elections. Minister of Education. Following Trine Skei Grande’s decision to resign as minister and party leader in March 2020, Melby was asked by Grande personally if  she wanted to succeed her as minister. She expressed sorrow by Grande’s resignation, saying that “being education minister was her dream job”. Her appointment also coincided with the lockdown and closing of schools in Norway due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, she went against professional advice to exclude homeschool for students, despite the infection level being at yellow. She was criticised by many educational experts for her decision, but she defended it by saying that it would be up to the schools respectively to decide and notify their county governor about it. She was however supported by  the lecturer team, the Education Association and the Oslo City Commission for Knowledge and Education. In March, she expressed that close contacts in schools needed to be reduced and encouraged schools to borrow premises if necessary. She also stressed the importance to keep students physically at school as much as possible. She also expressed scepticism to Oslo’s Knowledge and Education Commissioner’s proposal to keep schools in Oslo at a yellow level. In late March, she caused controversy when she suggested to establish a new school subject in upper secondary schools focusing on democracy, equality and ethical issues, allegedly  replacing or overriding the history subject. She quickly apologised for her statement, and said it came out wrong. The leader of the Norwegian Lecturer Team, Rita Helgesen, criticised Melby, stating that she had created a new subject that wasn’t a subject at all. The Conservative’s Turid Kristensen also criticised Melby, stating that they didn’t want to build down common subjects. Party leadership. In August 2020, she announced her intention to stand for the Liberal leadership following Grande’s resignation. She became the third person after Sveinung Rotevatn and Abid Raja to announce their run for the leadership . She told reporters that she had sought advice from Grande herself and did not exclude seeking advice from her if she became leader. On 23 August 2020, she was unanimously designated leader of the Liberal Party by the party's election committee, with Sveinung Rotevatn and Abid Raja as first and second deputy leaders. At the party conference in September, she was unanimously elected party leader, with Rotevatn and Raja as deputy leaders. In April 2021, she called on the leader of the Labour Party, Jonas Gahr Støre, to support the governing parties’ drug reform, which already had the support  of the Socialist Left Party. She expressed that “the Labour Party now has the opportunity to show that they support ordinary people, and that it’s not just empty words and rhetoric. If Jonas Gahr Støre supports this reform, he should go in front and lead the way”. Following the Labour Party's conference, where Gahr Støre announced he would not be supporting the drug reform, Melby stated that Støre had showed his true self, and called him a "defender of moralism". She further stated that the party "is pursuing a drug policy that is failing and has negative consequences