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Iceland's Election: Left-Leaning Parties (Including Pirates) Win Total of 27 Seats
from the the-times-they-are-a'changing dept.
Common Dreams reports
Saturday night's election results show [that] Iceland's Pirate Party [...] won 10 seats, more than tripling its three seats in the last election. The Left-Green Party also won 10 seats.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, the leader of the Pirate Party, said she was satisfied with the result. "Whatever happens, we have created a wave of change in the Icelandic society", she told a cheering crowd early Sunday morning [October 30].
The left-leaning parties--the Left-Greens, the Pirates, and two allies--won a total of 27 seats, just short of the 32 required to command a majority in Iceland's Parliament, the world's oldest.
The governing center-right Progressive party lost more than half of its seats in the election which was triggered by Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson's resignation in April in the wake of the leaked Panama Papers which revealed the offshore assets of high-profile figures.
Current Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson [resigned October 30].
The anti-establishment Pirate Party, which was founded in 2012, had said it could be looking to form a coalition with three left-wing and centrist parties.
The Pirates' core issues are: direct democracy, freedom of expression, civil rights, net neutrality, and transparency, all set out in a popular, crowdsourced draft of a new national Constitution that the current government has failed to act on. They also seek to re-nationalize the country's natural resource industries, create new rules for civic governance, and issue a passport to Edward Snowden.
[Continues...]
Iceland's Pirate Party Gains Seats, but No Majority
Iceland's Pirate Party has gained 7 seats following the parliamentary election, bringing its total to 10 out of 63:
Iceland's Pirate Party has tripled its seats in the 63-seat parliament, election results show. It is in joint second place with the Left-Greens - with 10 seats each. But their centre-left coalition fell short of a majority to form a government. The governing Progressive Party lost more than half of its seats in the poll triggered by the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson. Its junior partner, the Independence Party, has come top with 21 seats.
Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson stepped down in April in the wake of the leaked Panama Papers which revealed the offshore assets of high-profile figures. Current Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson resigned on Sunday.
Icelandic parliamentary election, 2016
Previously: Iceland's Pirate Party Tops Polls Ahead of National Elections
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @01:40PM
When a major plank in their party is targeted at one specific individual, then they are clearly not ready for grown ups who need to deal with larger issues than pet peeves. If they want to do that, that's fine, but I'm not going to take them seriously if their selling point is to join the Eddie Fan Club because that tells me that once they issue the passport (and get past the "OMG! I got to meet him and get his autograph!!! stage), they'll just be flailing around because they don't know what to do, or even what their stances are, on more important issues.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tibman on Tuesday November 01 2016, @02:15PM
Sounds like your head is in the sand to me. Just glancing at this thing you can tell they are about government transparency. They probably offered the passport because they want to reward his behavior (as a whistleblower). Perhaps you prefer politicians that say a lot but give no specifics?
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 01 2016, @02:19PM
One could argue that our own government isn't sufficiently grown up to deal with individual whistleblowers like Snowden either.
"Oh yeah we totally have an open door policy about whistleblowing...in completely unrelated news, you're fired and we're going to sit on this and not tell anyone."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"