Pirate Party surge falls short in Iceland election

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pirate-party-surge-falls-short-in-iceland-election/2016/10/30/0292462e-9d21-11e6-b552-b1f85e484086_story.html

LONDON — The Pirate Party, a radical movement of anarchists and hackers that didn’t exist this time four years ago, surged to third place in Iceland’s national elections but fell well short of expectations that it could top the vote, according to results released Sunday.

The outcome of the Saturday election more than triples the number of Pirates in the country’s parliament, the world’s oldest, and it ensures that the renegade movement will remain a force in Icelandic politics for years to come.

The Pirates, an offshoot of an international movement launched in Sweden, had campaigned on a platform of direct democracy, transparency and turning Iceland into “a digital safe haven, the Switzerland of bits.” The party’s leader, poet Birgitta Jónsdóttir, had promised Edward Snowden citizenship in a Pirate-led Iceland.

But voters stopped short of putting the Pirates in a position to govern, opting instead to give the pro-business and establishment-oriented Independence Party another shot to lead a country that was turned upside down by the 2008 financial crisis. The Independents had argued that the Pirates were a danger to the country’s economy, which has recently found its footing thanks to a tourism boom.

As expected, no party won a majority, and the Independents will struggle to form a coalition after their partner for the past three years, the pro-farmer Progressives, were punished by voters for the lingering fallout from the crash as well as this year’s disclosures in the so-called Panama Papers. The spring revelation of an offshore firm owned by the prime minister’s wife forced his resignation, and led to the calling of Saturday’s vote.