Iceland’s Pirate Party ready to board ship of state

Iceland’s Pirate Party, founded in 2012 as a marginal protest group, is now unexpectedly in a position where it could seize power in a country fed up with the political and financial establishment.

Recent public opinion polls show the party with 43 percent of voter support, with many Icelanders furious to discover that hundreds of their rich and powerful countrymen were named in the so-called Panama Papers leak which exposed hidden offshore dealings around the world.

The Pirate Party, a libertarian movement campaigning for more transparency in politics as well as Internet freedom and copyright reform, is modeled on a Swedish namesake launched in 2006.

“We can’t predict whether (voter support) will stay like this or not, but what we can see is that people like our style, our approach,” Asta Gudrun Helgadottir, one of three Pirate Party members to hold a seat in parliament, tells AFP.

— AFP