Pirate Party Iceland election, 14% - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 06:38:46PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> Let's see what the day brings. "Any change is a good change" at this
> point, some might say :)
> 
> 
> Iceland’s Radical Pirate Party Projected to Win Election
> https://sputniknews.com/politics/201610291046863667-pirate-prty-iceland/


Not the parliamentary storm the polls suggested, but a solid result.



----- Forwarded message from Falkvinge on Liberty -----
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2016 11:23:23 +0000
From: Falkvinge on Liberty <noreply+feedproxy at google.com>
Reply-To: Falkvinge on Liberty <rick at piratpartiet.se>
Subject: Falkvinge on Infopolicy

Falkvinge on Liberty

///////////////////////////////////////////
Reykjavik: Icelandic Pirates Triple Result, But Not Largest Party

Posted: 29 Oct 2016 06:59 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Falkvinge-on-Infopolicy/~3/KaBuTsLBDU4/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

Iceland:The Icelandic Pirate Party has made a record election. Early
vote counts place Pirates at 14 percent, for nine ten seats of the
63-seat worlds oldest Parliament. As the victory party draws to a close
and the results slowly finalize, its worth looking a little at what
comes next.

Pirate Parties keep succeeding, although on a political timescale. It
started out a little carefully with getting elected to the European
Parliament from Sweden, then to multiple state parliaments in Germany,
city councils all over Europe, the Czech Senate, and the Icelandic
Parliament, all in a decades insanely hard volunteer work.

Today, as the victory party draws long into the night and as the
Election Saturday becomes Celebration Sunday (and quite probably
Interview-and-Media Sunday for a lot of people), its clear that the
Pirate Party of Iceland has broken all previous election records,
clocking in at 14% with about one-third of the votes counted at 01:00 on
election night. (UPDATED to show final results; the Pirate Party is in
shared second place with 10 seats out of the Icelandic Alþingis 63.)



In the polls, it was a close race up until the very end whether the
Pirate Party would become the largest party, but as we can see, that
support doesnt seem to have materialized  which by no means diminishes
the feat of re-election and tripled support. Polls had been showing the
Píratar as high as 42%, wiping the floor with the competition and being
close to a solo majority, but polls are not the election.

It is absolutely crucial here to not measure this result in terms of
expectations from earlier polls, but in terms of getting re-elected
which no pirate party has succeeded in before  and in terms of tripling
support, reaching a new election highscore. Now that were at the
election night, ignore the polls. This is the big thing that just
happened.

With Pirate Parties in about 60 countries, we keep learning from each
other.  Theres no clear cut correct answer on how to change the world,
no preset path to follow. We all learn by trial and error and learn from
each other somebodys always in the lead, and others can learn from their
experience. It used to be Sweden, then Germany; now, it is most
definitely Iceland.

And as I said on the Berlin election victory night in 2011: Tomorrow,
this is going to be in all the papers. Not just in Berliner Zeitung and
Die Welt, but in the Wall Street Journal, the South China Morning Post,
and the India Today.  (I was wrong then. Not about the coverage, but
about the time: the stories were breaking in world media during the
victory party, and not holding off until tomorrow as I claimed. I expect
the same thing to be happening right now.)

On the victory night of 2009, I said that this is the net generation
starting to reclaim its civil liberties from stale, vested interests
trying to prevent the future from taking place. The hard road was
bumpier than expected, but that is most definitely what is happening.

So today, this is an Icelandic celebration. This is the Icelandic pirate
volunteers victory, their hard work coming to fruition, and their night
to celebrate. They have more than earned it. And the rest of the
movement have everything to learn, while buying an Icelander a beer.

(I thought of wearing a custom made shirt with the text I voted pirate
before it was cool printed on the back to this victory party, since
pirates have now gone mainstream, but didnt think of it in time. Plus,
as Andy Carling pointed out, voting pirate was always cool.)


Background to early elections

The Icelandic Pirates are already in Parliament with three seats out of
63, which is what has allowed them to show their attitude to things in
the past term, after the financial crisis of 2008, which hit Iceland
hard. Unlike most (or all) countries, Iceland let its bankers carry the
burden of their own downfall, not bailing them out but sending the
bankers to prison instead.  However, the ruling coalition at the time
led by the Independence Party tried very hard to bail out the Icelandic
bankers, but failed to find somebody willing to pay for it, leaving
bankruptcy as the only remaining option.

When the Panama Papers burst earlier this year, and it turned out that
the Prime Minister and the President had, or were connected to, offshore
accounts that had profited nicely from the Icelandic banking collapse,
the situation became politically impossible, they all stepped down, and
called early elections. Not extremely early like half-term or anything
like that, though the elections are six months early on a four-year
schedule; they would have been held in May 2017 otherwise.

Its also worth mentioning what it means that Iceland has a proportional
parliament: it means that there are more than two parties, lots more
than two parties, and that these parties negotiate after the election to
form a coalition that reaches more than 50% of the seats in the
Icelandic Parliament, the Alþingi (the all-thing, thing being an Old
English word for a time and place where you settled disputes  still
present in some Scandinavian words like tingsrett, thing-rights, meaning
the local District Court.)

In any case, this means that winning doesnt necessarily mean becoming
the largest party; you may be the largest party and still end up in
opposition for the coming term.

The Icelandic Alþingi, the worlds oldest parliament.
The next steps

What happens next is the coalition game. Seeing that you need at least
three parties to form any majority coalition with the early results,
pirates may end up in the governing coalition, and pirates may not. This
is far too early to tell and its going to be weeks before the
negotiations produce a new government.

Well see in a few weeks which plays out and which coalition succeeds in
forming. Regardless, this result is enormously promising every bit of
the way, not just for Iceland, but for civil liberties activists
everywhere.  A Switzerland of Bits

This leaves the question of what this means for the future. Assuming the
Icelandic Pirate Party gets into a position to set a significant amount
of policy for Iceland, and where they have talked of creating a
Switzerland of Bits in Iceland, what does that mean for the world?

As it turns out, it means a whole lot.

The current old-world regime depends on all countries cooperating and
agreeing on various monopolies that hold back the Internet and civil
liberties. For example, for the copyright monopoly to be effective, it
really requires that every single country that is connected to the
Internet cracks down ruthlessly on any civil liberty that happens to
threaten the entertainment industrys distribution monopoly.

It only takes one.

It only takes one country out of 196 to say enough is enough and kick
the old dinosaurs out. Theres no reason a cartoon industry  Disney
Corporation  should get to regulate the worlds most important
infrastructure. Quite the reverse: I find the idea revolting.

And it only takes one country to say out loud that this cartoon
industrys regulation is bullshit for all the dominoes to start falling,
and that is completely doable. For all the international agreements out
there, there are well enough legislative precedents to allow all copying
for private use from tomorrow onward, just to start somewhere.

The same principles go across the board for civil liberties as they
apply to the Internet. Its going to be real exciting, indeed  a
Switzerland of bits is exactly what the world needs at this point, and
its going to bring the old controlling world down and the new networked
world in.

Like on New Years, sometimes its time to go to the bells and ring out
the old, and ring in the new, with a smile on your face full of hopes
and dreams. And even if the pirate party doesnt get to make policy this
time around, theres a next election, and a next. This is a long term
thing.

Birgitta, Jon Þor, Smári, Ásta, Finnur, Kári, Elsa, Halldór, Halldóra,
Sigridur, Eva, Helgi, and everybody else, all the fantastic people
awesome, amazing work. But you knew that already. I am proud, as always,
to call myself your colleague.

UPDATE: As of 1300, the pirate vote count stands at 14.5% and ten seats
to the Alþingi; one more seat than the midnight tally. The article has
been updated to reflect this.

The post Reykjavik: Icelandic Pirates Triple Result, But Not Largest
Party appeared first on Falkvinge on Liberty.

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