Pirate Party Elected To Parliament In Iceland, First Pirate Party Victory In National Parliament

from the in-just-five-months dept

There's been a bit of political upheaval over in Iceland with this weekend's national election. As was widely expected, the "centre-right" opposition parties have returned to power, though many are pointing out that these are the same folks who "bankrupted" Iceland (though it wasn't them alone who did that...). However, in this upheaval, it appears that the brand new Pirate Party Iceland, which started just a few months ago, was able to squeak by the 5% threshold and gain what appears to be 3 Members of Parliament. That would make it the first Pirate Party victory in a national parliamentary election. As many of you already know, the Pirate Party has elected two MEPs to the European Parliament from Sweden, and there have been a number of victories in various German regional elections, though the German Pirate Party has also gone through some recent upheaval of its own. The Icelandic Pirate Party is lead by Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who is a former Member of Parliament in Iceland who got plenty of attention (including from the US government) for helping Wikileaks.