Surprise from the Icelandic Pirate Party? In recent months we have often read about the love story between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a seemingly endless election cycle in the United States. But in tiny Iceland (population 323,000) something very interesting is happening.
The Icelandic Pirate Party, until recently considered a fringe political movement, is poised to win an unprecedented electoral victory.
The latest polls show that it will manage to get 20 percent of the vote. Thus, it is very likely to gain more seats in the Althing and take part in the next Icelandic government as a coalition party.
The polls, according to TorrentFreak, were conducted between October 14 and 19 by the University of Iceland's Institute for Social Science Research for the daily newspaper Morgunblaðið.
The Icelandic Pirate Party appears to be in first place, with 22.6 percent of the vote share. This puts it slightly ahead of the Independents Party, which is currently in power.
Support for the Pirate Party has surged since the release of the Panama Papers, which allegedly implicated many members of the Icelandic political establishment in corruption and tax evasion.
Pirate politics is still a relatively new movement. The first Pirate Party was founded ten years ago in Sweden by Rick Falkvinge. Since then, the idea has spread to other countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. Of course, the Pirate Party could not be missing from Greece.
In general, the Pirate Parties are strong supporters of intellectual property rights and patent law reform, government transparency, and direct democracy.
What does the future hold? If Iceland's Pirate Party manages to get the percentages that the polls give it, it will be the first time that such a party will gain a significant role in the governance of a country.
In combination with the successes of the Swedish and German parties in the previous elections for the European Parliament, it shows that Pirate Politics is slowly entering the mainstream.
