Sæl og blessuð og avast me hearties! While you in America are eagerly awaiting election day to decide whether your country will be governed by Hillary Clinton or A Glowing Orange-Hot Ball Of Rage, here on the ice we’re voting for our government today. This is ongoing, and unfortunately I have to work tomorrow; otherwise I’d liveblog it all night. But let’s let you know how things stand!
We’ve been getting a lot of attention in the international media by the fact that the Pirates have been high in the polls, and at one point were the largest party in the country by a healthy margin. They since crashed in the polls to a small fraction of the peak, about 19%. Why? It’s a combination of factors. While Pirate Parties have some defining characteristics — a focus on extreme openness and direct citizen involvement, somewhat of a technocratic anarcho-democratic movement — they don’t inherently have a place on the left-right spectrum. As our Pirate Party drifted left, it shed its right-leaning people to more traditional right parties. Meanwhile it went under heavy attack, both in the media (which is nearly universally owned and aggressively controlled by wealthy individuals tied to the conservatives) and in ads (funded by the same sort of people). They ranged from nasty to outright silly (just the other day they had a mathematics professor spending a whole article tearing into a leading Pirate because some of the math articles he wrote / expanded on Icelandic Wikipedia years ago when he was in college had errors). Lastly, the Left Greens have been rising unusually fast, for reasons I never fully grasped, but hey….
So, here’s how things stand as I write this:
Got it? Wait, no?
Okay, let’s translate it to US terms.
A couple comments.
One, it probably looks to you like Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn / Independence Party / aka Icelandic Republicans will be inherently dominating our next government. But they could just as well be in the opposition. Leftist parties will find it much easier to make a coalition together; Vinstri Grænir (Greens), Samfylkingin (Social Democrats) and Píratapartýið (Pirates) have all stated that in no situation will any of them join a coalition with Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn.
Framsóknarflokkurinn is a sort of “lesser-deplorability Trumpista” party (standard electoral strategy: “We’re going to give everyone money and nobody will ever have to pay for it — it’s going to be so great, the best, believe me! ((now please look the other way while we help ourselves))”. Their crash this cycle is historic. They went from the largest (by a good margin) party, running the country with their lesser partners in Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn, down to well below the Pirates. The party was badly hit in the Panama Papers — starting in rather amusing fashion with the Prime Minister:
And after that, ate itself apart from the inside.
The Pirate result is disappointing in some regards, but impressive in others. Yes, they’ve dropped tremendously in the polls, and won’t even be the largest party in the governing coalition, if results hold as they are and leftist coalition manages to takes over. A low turnout (by Icelandic standards) this cycle is believed to have been in at least in part responsible, as Pirates draw a lot of support from unreliable voters such as young adults. On the other hand, a brand new, outsider party with such a name tripling its representation in parliament and becoming a major power broker in government this quickly is no small feat.
Again, if things hold and negotiations go as hopes, we could expect a lot of things to happen — perhaps most notably among them, the resurrection of our awesome new draft constitution**. What I hope most is that they manage to root out the terribly endemic corruption and dominance of the political process by people bought and paid for by the “fishing giants” and other wealthy individuals (our last term has been basically a continuous stream of the government selling state assets to family and friends at a small fraction of their market value, with people hiding their money and connections away in Panama). The corruption needs to go. In particular, a leading figure in the Pirate Party, Smári McCarthy, has worked for the past several years doing exactly that — as part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, he used software to help track down secret slush funds and other ways to shuffle around money without the public knowing.
I wouldn’t call these results perfect… but they’re hope. I’m cautiously optimistic about this next term. We’ll see what sort of government forms!
** Some constitution draft highlights for you. You can see why the right felt the need to derail it ;)
A child shall be guaranteed the right to express its opinions in all instances concerning it and due recognition shall be accorded to the child’s opinions in concert with its age and maturity
The freedom of science, academia and art shall be ensured by law.
All shall be assured of the right to an adequate standard of living and social security.
All in such need shall be guaranteed a right by law to public social security and public assistance, such as due to unemployment, childbirth, old age, poverty, disability, illness, permanent impairment or similar circumstances.
All shall have the right to mental and physical health to the highest standard possible. All shall by law have the right to an accessible, appropriate and adequate health service.
The death penalty may never be introduced into law.
A compulsory military service may never be introduced into law.
Iceland’s nature constitutes the basis for life in the country. All shall respect and protect it. All shall by law be accorded the right to a healthy environment, fresh water, unpolluted air and unspoiled nature. This means that the diversity of life and land must be maintained and nature’s objects of value, uninhabited areas, vegetation and soil shall enjoy protection. Earlier damages shall be repaired as possible.
Iceland’s natural resources that are not private property shall be the joint and perpetual property of the nation. No one can acquire the natural resources, or rights connected thereto, as property or for permanent use and they may not be sold or pledged. 9 Publicly owned natural resources include resources such as marine stocks, other resources of the ocean and its bottom within Iceland’s economic zone and the sources of water and water-harnessing rights, the rights to geothermal energy and mining.
I’ll stop here, I need to go to sleep. Góða nótt, landlubbers!
ED: As of 8 AM local time, with 77,4% of the vote tallied, things are not headed in the direction I’d like to see. Bright Future and the Left Greens have each lost a seat, while the Progress Party (party of our current PM) and Viðreisn (moderate-right to center) each gained one. I was hoping for movement in the other direction :( Really hoping that the large Independence Party and now-little Progress Party don’t manage to partner up with Viðreisn… otherwise it’s going to be a whole additional term of the right looting the country to enrich themselves. But I really don’t know what Viðreisn is thinking at this point.