Pirates take Iceland: Panama Papers create perfect opportunity for Pirate Party to form government
There is a good chance that a party often derided as a joke could soon form government in a small, Nordic island nation in the north Atlantic.
“Pirate government” might sound like an oxymoron, but a series of events building since the Global Financial Crisis is coming to a head in Iceland that could take the Pirate Party from punchline to office of prime minister.
A political storm is swirling over Iceland. Squalls of corruption allegations have gained a hurricane pace with Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson and his wife Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir sitting in its eye.
Iceland PM threatens to dissolve parliament, call new elections
Australian companies, taxpayers exposed after Panama Papers leak
Late Tuesday, the prime minister resigned amid growing pressure from the details about his company disclosed in the Panama Papers, handing power to his deputy.
Scandal surrounded Gunnlaugsson for several with weeks. Calls for his resignation sounded on the back allegations he and his wife – a former banker – are alleged owners of an offshore shell company worth millions but paying no tax.
This past weekend resignation cries became a deafening roar as the Panama Papers seem to reveal the prime minister – and a number of other ministers, MPs and other prominent members of the community – have allegedly siphoned off funds to tax havens around the globe.
Gunnlaugsson insisted the uxorial Birtish Virgin Islands-based company, Wintris Inc, (he sold his share to his wife for just $1) has done nothing below board. Yet, he stormed out of a TV interview when pressed about it Sunday.
"I have not considered quitting because of this matter nor am I going to quit because of this matter," Gunnlaugsson told Iceland's Channel 2 as walked out the door. However, the PM is still refusing to release his tax papers.
Icelandic citizens' angry howls for the PMs resignation have been matched with petition signed by 30,000 – nearly 10 per cent of the population.
Leading the call in Iceland's parliament, the Althing, are three unlikely Pirate MPs who would be at the centre of the next government. Pirate and titular opposition leader Birgitta Jónsdóttir has been gunning for the PM for weeks. Now Gunnlaugsson is mortally wounded.
“What would be the most natural and the right thing to do is that he resign as prime minister,” Jónsdóttir said Monday. “There is great demand for that in society; he has totally lost all his trust and believability.”
On Tuesday Gunnlaugsson wrote on Facebook he had informed his coalition partner, the Independence Party, that if "cannot support the government in completing joint tasks, I would dissolve parliament and call a general election".
If current polling numbers can be believed, the Pirates would claim the largest block of the 63 seats in the world's oldest continuous parliament.
For the past year Iceland's Pirates have claimed top position in nationals polls. A recent Gallop poll recorded the party's popularity at 36.1 per cent – the highest ever recorded by Gallop in the nation. Although not high enough to form a majority, Iceland's Pirates are polling higher than the two ruling parties combined – Independence recording a 23.2 per cent and Gunnlaugsson 's Progressive notching 12.1 per cent.
With the possibility of the world's first Pirate Party government in their grasp, Jónsdóttir told the Independent the upstarts are primed.
"It's a really liquid situation. But, of course, if it happens we are ready. We have been asked time and time again since we scored so high in the polls. We are ready," she said.
Jónsdóttir said the Icelandic people were sick of national leaders' "collapse of ethics", and the Panama leaks felt like history repeating, like "the day after the financial collapse" in the GFC.
Enough of business as usual
As members returned to the Althing Monday following the Easter break they were met by an angry crowd of protesters numbering greater than 10,000. Organisers expect the number to grow much larger – a significant mass in a country of 323,000. But marches in the capital Reykjavik have become almost mainstay since the GFC all but sunk the island nation's economy.
During the boom a cabal of Iceland's banking elite leveraged the national economy to make themselves unspeakably wealthy while creating a national debt of AU$75 billion. Then the crunch came, Iceland's stock market plunged 90 per cent and the economy fell into a sharp depression.
People took to the streets in a “pots and pans” revolution calling for parliament's resignation and the bankers responsible to be jailed. The government collapsed and bankers were rounded up and sentenced. As of January this year, 29 have traded mansions for not-unpleasant Nordic prison cells.
The centre cannot hold in the current climate of tax secrecy laid bare by the Panama Papers. Voters' anger, directed at the ruling elite, has created the fertile ground for smaller parties' popularity to grow. Even a radical party like the Pirates – which places open, transparent and accountable government as paramount policy – look more appealing than establishment parties.
As one Icelandic Pirate voter told Yahoo7, "Following the crash everyone was pretty god damn tired of business as usual". The Redditor, who asked not to be named, said decades of infighting and political stagnation among in the "four party system" has compelled voters – many highly-educated, connected Millennials paying high costs of living – to look for something beyond the status quo.
Another voter said he and his 70-year-old mother voted Pirate at the last election, so it is not only young people wanting change. Some expressed a dislike for the party leader Jónsdóttir and were uncertain of her potential as a PM.
Amid there turmoil, one voter said there is certainty of one thing: "The prime minister will no longer be prime minister at the end of the week. i can almost guarantee that (sic)".
What are 'Pirate politics'?
Created by Swedish tech entrepreneur Rick Falkvinge on January 1, 2006, the Pirate Party has grown into a global political movement with autonomous parties in more 70 countries worldwide – including Australia.
It is a party of the internet age. In addition to transparent government, Pirates' primary policies include the protection of individual privacy and copyright law reform to better suit the digital age. Pirates have been elected to local councils and parliaments in a number of European nations – including the European parliament – but none have come close to forming even a fantasy government. Until now.
President of the Australian party Simon Frew told Yahoo7 the lack of trust in Iceland's leaders has seen people flock to Pirates.
"Pirate Party Iceland's platform demands transparency and accountability for institutions, so it has an obvious appeal after the people's loss of faith in the political establishment," he said.
Iceland would be the perfect laboratory for Pirates to put their policies to the test. It rates consistently high as a nation that respects and protects the freedom of its citizens online, and it has been floated as a global information hub. It's a small nation geographically and by population, so running the government would be comparable to running Wollongong council, Frew said – albeit a council with ministries for defence, health, education and finance.
"The bureaucracy won't change so the day-to-day running of the government will continue, albeit with much better policies," he said.
If politicians are already viewed as plundering the nation, something that could change with the Pirates is the daily running of Iceland's government with naked accountability at the centre. This could give pirate politics some legitimacy, which Frew hopes would "encourage more Australians to take a look at what we stand for because they will like what they see".
The widening gyre over the north Atlantic isle may carry Iceland's Pirate Party aloft, but it would take a mighty wind to set a new political course on the opposite side of the world, let alone anywhere close by.
