Icelanders headed to the polls on Saturday to vote in one of the closest national elections in years. The Pirate Party, a progressive faction founded four years ago by a group of hackers, activists, and Internet freedom advocates, has the chance to form part of a ruling coalition.
Polls published on Friday showed that the Pirate Party is slated to receive between 18 and 21 percent of the vote, making it the second-biggest party in Iceland’s parliament, the Althingi. The Pirate Party and three left-wing opposition parties, the Left-Green Movement, Bright Future, and Social Democratic Alliance, said they would form a coalition government if they secure enough seats. Meanwhile, the polls also indicate that the incumbent government, made up of the Independence Party and the Progressive Party, will be voted out.
The anti-establishment Pirate Party, which campaigns for direct democracy, government transparency, and anti-corruption measures, has drawn voters that are tired of the scandals that have befallen the country’s mainstream parties. Public anger mostly stems from the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the revelations published in the Panama Papers leak, which caused former Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to resign in April.
Currently, the Pirate Party has three members in the 63-seat Althingi, and the party’s de facto leader is Birgitta Jónsdóttir. The 49-year-old parliament member, poet, and former WikiLeaks associate has in the past said she has no desire to become prime minister, but instead wants to do away with corruption and dysfunction in Iceland. “We do not define ourselves as left or right, but rather as a party that focuses on the systems,” she told the Guardian. “In other words, we consider ourselves hackers — so to speak — of our current outdated systems of government.”
Polls in Iceland opened at 9 a.m. on Saturday, and they close at 10 p.m. According to the Associated Press, partial election results are expected early Sunday.
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