Eight years after its economic collapse, Iceland faces a second earthquake this weekend with graft-weary voters poised to embrace the upstart Pirate Party.
Co-founded six years ago by a collective that included Smári McCarthy, an Irish-Icelandic internet activist, Iceland’s Pirates have promised to complete the unfinished revolution triggered by the 2008 financial meltdown.
Almost a decade after its banks collapsed, forcing an international bailout, Iceland’s economy is growing by 5 per cent and the jobless rate has fallen to 3 per cent. But many of Iceland’s 330,000 citizens are still saddled with debt, struggling to make ends meet and facing their own housing crisis. And many have unfinished business with the political dynasties who ruined the country but largely survived the subsequent collapse. For angry voters, Saturday is payback time.
Irish father
Mr McCarthy, a 32-year-old activist with an Icelandic mother and Irish father, is one of the leading lights of Europe’s Pirate movement, which has developed a new take on grassroots political involvement, dubbed delegative or “liquid” democracy.
“Despite our name, we’re taken fairly seriously in Iceland,” said Mr McCarthy in an online discussion with supporters, “in particular because of our very aggressive anti-corruption stance, our pro-transparency work, and our general push in the direction of a more information-driven society with strong civil liberties.”
After winning three seats in Reykjavik’s Althing parliament in 2013, the Pirates’ first Bill proposed granting asylum to Edward Snowden – an offer they say still stands. Since then the party of hackers, libertarians and anarchists has broadened its policy base – and voter appeal – with strategies on the environment, health, housing and law-and-order issues.
Mr McCarthy, a former Wikileaks activist and candidate in Iceland’s south constituency, has been mentioned as a possible minister in any new coalition.
If the party finishes first his Pirate colleague Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a poet-turned-MP, may reverse her previous refusal and become Iceland’s next prime minister. “As a nation we are in the middle of something and are not quite sure what it is because we can’t see into the future,” she said.
Economic recovery
Large numbers of undecided voters have led to volatile opinion polls. Recent surveys gave the Pirates up to 24 per cent of votes, rising to 40 per cent among the under 30s. That puts them neck-and-neck with the centre-right Independence Party, in power for much of the country’s post-independence history. It is one of two outgoing coalition parties, alongside the centrist Progressive Party, campaigning for re-election on the foot of the economic recovery.
But many Icelanders are tired of the big two parties, perceiving them as dominated by wealthy, tax-avoiding families. That suspicion hardened seven months ago when the Panama Papers revealed links between prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson – leader of the Progressive Party – and an undeclared stake in an offshore company.
The prime minister denied wrongdoing and resigned only in April after massive public protest. Now his party is lingering at just nine per cent in polls, reducing its clout as political force and a coalition partner.
Instead a centre-left coalition is likely, with the Pirates playing a key role, something political scientists have dubbed an overdue political renewal process.
But like its famed volcanic landscape, Iceland’s political landscape is now unstable and rocky, meaning the two-party coalitions of old are unlikely after polls close. Seven parties are likely to make it into the new parliament, almost twice the previous number, meaning post-election coalition talks are likely to be a complicated business.
Regardless of the outcome, with the Pirates adrift in Sweden and sinking in Germany, the Icelanders are hopeful they can revive the pan-European movement and, in government, breathe new life into Europe’s oldest parliament.
