Iceland's Pirates head for power on wave of public anger
REYKJAVIK, (Reuters) - A party that hangs a skulland-crossbones flag at its HQ, and promises to clean up corruption, grant asylum to Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin virtual currency, could be on course to form the next Icelandic government.
The Pirate Party has found a formula that has eluded many anti-establishment groups across Europe. It has tempered polarising policies like looser copyright enforcement rules and drug decriminalisation with pledges of economic stability that have won confidence among voters.
This has allowed it to ride a wave of public anger at perceived corruption among the political elite the biggest election issue in a country where a 2008 banking collapse hit thousands of savers and government figures have been mired in an offshore tax furore following the Panama Papers leaks.
If the Pirates emerge as the biggest party in an Oct. 29 parliamentary election as opinion polls suggest they will deliver another defeat to Europe's mainstream politicians.
The rise to power of a party which started out less than four years ago as a protest movement against global copyright laws, and whose election campaign is partly crowdfunded, would create shockwaves felt far beyond this island of 336,000 people on the edge of the Arctic Circle.
"Across Europe ... increasingly many people think that the system that is supposed to look after them is not doing it anymore," Pirate leader Birgitta Jonsdottir, who is also a published poet, told Reuters.
"We know that we are new to this and it is important that we are extra careful and extra critical on ourselves to not take too much on. I really don't think that we are going to make a lot of ripples in the economy in the first term."
"That is one of the things where you have to trust in the experts," the 49-year-old added, referring to the ongoing lifting of capital control instituted by the central after the bank crisis.
The Pirates are benefiting from Iceland's fragmented political landscape where coalition government is the norm. Opinion polls show support for the party running at over 20 percent, slightly ahead of the Independence Party, which shares power with the Progressive Party.
The left-leaning party is part of a global anti-establishment typified by Britain's vote to leave the European Union. But their platform is far removed from the anti-immigration policies of the UK Independence Party, France's National Front and Germany's AfD, or the anti-austerity of Greece's Syriza.
Iceland's gross income per capita was almost $50,000 in 2015, according to the World Bank, well above the $34,435 EU average - though still 20 percent below a 2007 peak. Immigration levels are low compared with many other European countries.
Helped by a tourism boom, economic growth this year is expected to hit 4.3 percent and the latest data shows a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 3.1 percent.