Owe Ingemann Waltherzøe resigned last week as leader of the Industry and Business Party (INP), after a long time of conflicts and controversies surrounding him.
In a letter sent out to members on Tuesday, the new leader Joar Nesse takes “the blade out of his mouth”.
He claims Waltherzøe is still trying to gag the INP, after he left the party and formed a new one.
“Owe is holding the whole party hostage. Among other things, he still has control over the party’s bank account, and INP currently does not have access to it. He alone controls the party’s website, Facebook account and e-mails. Owe also demands payment for INP to get the rights to its own domain,” writes Nesse in the letter, which Dagbladet has seen.
Warned of “neck shot”
Compared to Trump
The INP has grown rapidly as a protest party and was above the barrier in several of the autumn’s polls.
The party leader has been accused of “blacklisting” members, pushing people in and out of positions and scolding dissenters in the party. This is revealed in leaked documents that Dagbladet has previously mentioned. Waltherzøe dismissed the accusations as bullshit.
INP: Owe Ingemann Waltherzøe resigned as party leader in the INP, this is what political commentator Sondre Hansmark says about the departure. Reporter: Emma Dalen. view more
Waltherzøe has now signed off and started a new party called the Norwegian Industry Party (DNI). It wrote Address newspaper Monday.
The mother party’s new leader and former deputy leader, Joar Nesse, has for a long time expressed support for Waltherzøe in Dagbladet and other media.
Now the tone is different.
“He is compared by many in the party to Donald Trump,” Nesse writes about Waltherzøe.
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Accused of lying
Nesse accuses the former leader of lies and unethical methods and calls him authoritarian and self-willed. He claims Waltherzøe should have thrown those who disagree with him out the door and shut down democratically elected political committees.
“The source of the most serious conflicts in INP has largely been Owe Waltherzøe himself,” claims Nesse in the letter.
Nesse writes that he is considering coming up with more examples and documentation on Waltherzøe, if he continues to create problems for the party.
Read the entire letter
«Owe Ingemann Waltherzøe is the source of the major conflicts in INP.
Owe Ingemann Waltherzøe is no longer a member of the INP and has announced that he will start a new party. For those of us who continue the work in and for the party, this means that it will be easier to run the party as we believe it should be run, more inclusion, more skills development, more organizational development and much more politics.
The new leadership in the party has so far kept a low profile in order to keep the level of conflict down, but when Waltherzøe has been able to present his version and tell his story about the conflicts in the national media in the last few days, it is time for the INP to shut up. The source of the most serious conflicts in INP has largely been Owe Waltherzøe himself. His authoritarian and headstrong leadership style.
Owe has used all means to control the party organization in detail, and he has not hesitated to use lies and unethical methods, to get the party where he wanted. Anyone who has shown disagreement and voiced opposition to his views has been reviled or thrown at the door.
INP’s governing bodies have discussed administrative and organizational matters, with Owe Waltherzøe as a strong player both before, during and after the meetings. When he left the National Council meeting on 19 January this year, claiming that it had not been legally convened, he chose to “forget” all the meetings he himself has been responsible for, where the basis for the case was missing, or settings were changed shortly before the meeting. Or when he came up with a list of issues in the form of an informal memo, and silenced others from coming up with objections and other points of view.
Ahead of the 2023 National Assembly, several political committees were established. The intention was to continue the work of creating good and responsible policy in important areas of society. Instead, Owe Waltherzøe decided to deprive everyone of the right to speak on behalf of the party, and he decided to close down the committees.
He also silenced everyone else when it came to statements to the media and organizations. He claimed exclusive rights as spokesperson for the party. There was thus no one else to speak publicly. It is unclear where he meant to have such a mandate from.
One of several important measures that will now be carried out in the party is to restore political committees. Now INP will become a democratic member organisation, in practice.
People who have worked closely with Owe Waltherzøe feel that there has been a great distance between life and teaching in his way of leading the party. He is compared by many in the party to Donald Trump. Outwardly, he talks about INP being a democratic membership party, but in practice he has appeared as an authoritarian party leader, where everything must be carried out according to his ideas, both policy and organisation.
He is now trying to gag the party organization by threatening that if anyone talks negatively about him in the media, he will ensure that it will be difficult to run the organization further. Owe holds the whole party hostage. Among other things, he still has control over the party’s bank account, and INP currently does not have access to it. He alone controls the party’s website, Facebook account and e-mails. Owe also requires payment for INP to obtain the rights to its own domain. The domain was created in 2019, and for formal reasons it was created in Waltherzøe’s name., in the absence of an organization number. It is of course the party’s property, and something the INP has paid for. Nevertheless, he refuses to give up his rights.
Now Owe Waltherzøe is completely out, and in INP we can finally concentrate on politics. Everyone should know that INP will continue the policy we have had since the beginning. No one must believe Waltherzøe’s statements in the media that the INP has moved towards the far right in Norwegian politics. It’s probably a lie. The INP is firmly planted in the middle of the political map and is an alternative for everyone, whether they sympathize with the right or left side of Norwegian politics.
In this article, we have explained some of the challenges INP has had with Owe Waltherzøe as leader, and in practice sole ruler. We hope and believe that we will now bury all conflicts as quickly as possible, and move forward in peace and tolerance. But if Waltherzøe continues his fraudulent actions in the media, or in other ways creates problems for the party and all the wonderful politicians and members we have, then we consider presenting further examples and documentation of how challenging it has been to have Owe Waltherzøe as party leader for INP.
SIGN, 29 January 2024
Joar Nese
Party leader INP»
Sea view
Denies charges
Waltherzøe himself does not wish to comment on the letter, but refers to Ziv Bødtker, political deputy head of DNI.
She rejects the accusations that Waltherzøe is blocking INP’s bank account and says that she has approached INP and asked them to take over the account.
– It is an administrative exercise that must be done in Altinn, and Owe cannot do that now that he has left INP. They must remove the signature right, and it must be done in Altinn.
She says they can guarantee that the bank account will be transferred.
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She confirms that Waltherzøe still owns the domain for the websites and says they will come to a solution.
– We must come to a solution there as well. I have sent an inquiry and called two or three times. Then it is strange to send out a letter with such accusations. They have not made contact. We want dialogue.
She does not specifically answer Dagbladet’s question whether they will actually take money to transfer the domain, because this dialogue should not take place in the media.
Waltherzøe has removed the other party leaders in the INP from the large Facebook group with 50,000 members. Bødtker says about this:
– It is a blog he created before the party was born. It’s his. After all, INP has another Facebook account.
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Two sides of an issue
She does not agree with Nesse’s accusations about Waltherzøe’s leadership style:
– I have sat on the central board and do not recognize the descriptions of Owe.
-Det ends documentation that people in the party are accusing him for insults, blacklisting, even the Secretary General accuses him of this?
– There are always two sides to an issue, even if the general secretary and some in the party write that Owe is like this and like that. We have not discussed politics in a single meeting since last summer. It’s just about statutes and administration and general banter, says Bødtker.
INP leader Joar Nesse says for his part that Waltherzøe has not been in and updated the necessary information, and that the bank account is therefore blocked for them, as well as websites and e-mail accounts.
When asked what allegations about Waltherzøe he threatens to make public, he replies:
– No comment.