An early Icelandic election triggered by the involvement of government representatives in the Panama leaks saw the radical Pirate Party triple their support to 15%, and an increase in the representation of women (48%). We spoke to Halldóra Mogensen, Pirate Party MP to find out what this means for Iceland.
What is the feeling there after the recent election?
The feeling is strange. The political system is changing, we have 7 parties elected into Parliament. That’s the first time that’s ever happened in Iceland. The traditional four party system is falling apart. We’re seeing the end of it and moving closer to this Scandinavian model of having more representation in parliament, more diversity.
What are the next steps?
The formation of the government is still going on so everything revolves around that, we are in a waiting position. The president has given the agency for the right to form a government to the Independence Party who got the largest part of the vote, about 30%. But it’s interesting because that’s the same party that had a lot of members involved in the Panama Papers and the Panama leaks. Their corruption is the reason we had early elections in Iceland, we were not supposed to have elections until next year. But we had early elections because of corruption within the Progressive Party and the Independence Party. The Progressive Party just absolutely collapsed, they lost so much of their support. They still have a few MPs, but the Independence party got 30% support despite the Panama leaks so that has caused a very strange feeling. The former minister of finance, who was in the Panama leaks while he was minister of finance, he received the agency from the president to form a government, and what we’re seeing now is no one wants to work with him to form that government.
What are the most important issues facing Iceland at the moment?
Corruption is a big part of it. We are facing the same problems as you are in the UK and the US with this neoliberal ideology that has taken deep roots from Thatcher and Reagan and we have the Independence party that has been in power always, more or less. They have completely taken this neoliberal ideology and built our economic system on that foundation. And now we are finding this system is a very destructive force on democracy. A lot of corruption is coming out, but I think the main change as we move into this new stage of instant information and new technology is that these old political games that have been played in these countries for a long, long time, they aren’t working anymore. The secrets are coming to the surface and politicians are late to catch on to this.
We’ve seen moves to the right all over Europe and in the US, is that also happening in Iceland?
We’ve always been there. Out strongest party has been the independence party which is our right wing party – the Icelandic version of the Republican party, but we can’t compare them because we have never gone that far to the right in this country. We have a social system that is always very different. Whenever there is instability, and people are worried about finances, people think we can’t trust the left to know what they are doing with finances. It’s also that the Independence party in Iceland use the same tactics that are used all over the world during campaigning, where they tap into people’s fear. There’s a lot of that in their campaign – fear change, fear anyone who talks about anything different. That works. It works remarkably well. Because it taps into this inane trigger we have as human beings where we put our focus on the negative. Looking back through our history we are biologically triggered to put more focus into anything that makes us fearful.
The recent election saw Iceland break records for representation of women in politics, with 48% female seats. How do you think this will affect politics?
Right now it’s really good – we have 63 MPs and it was almost half, a little under half female.
I am hoping it will mean we can have a different conversation, there will be more listening and less argumentative conversations. That’s the main difficulty I feel is going on in Parliament. There’s so much playacting going on. Its all a game. They have all these speeches that have nothing to do with policy. It’s like a pissing contest really. It’s like an ego pissing contest – who has the most eloquent speech? Who can get their point across in the most forceful way? Who is able to make the other person look the worst? That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about policies, it’s about looking good and winning the game.
What policies will the Pirate Party focus on in the coming months?
The most important thing for Iceland right now has to do with getting in a new constitution, which is one of the main platforms we ran on. A constitution that comes directly from the people because we elected ordinary citizens into a council and these individuals wrote this constitution, and the main focus is taking concentrated power from the elite, taking that and spreading it to the people. That I think is the most important step we can take all over the world, and I think one of the only ways we can tackle corruption is spreading the power.
We’ll put a lot of emphasis on the new constitution, but it really depends on the negotiations of the government. We might be in the government, we might be outside supporting a minority government or we might be a minority so its difficult to tell, because if we are in the minority there is very little we can do. If you are in a minority you have no tools to do anything , that’s just how Icelandic politics works.
So if we are either in government, part of government or supporting the government then we will be able to negotiate things like the new constitution and rebuilding the healthcare system here because it’s been defunded by the Independence party so it can be sold off and privatised. That’s what the right wing want, they want to privatise the healthcare system and the banks.
They’ve been defunding the healthcare system which is the precursor to privatisation, then when it’s falling apart and people cry out for solutions and you privatise it. So one of the platforms we ran on was rebuilding the healthcare system because in polls it seems to be the top, important issue for Icelanders.
And what has been the reaction to that?
The reaction in Iceland has been that the Pirates tripled their support. We came in as a new party in 2013, the Pirate Party – which is a ridiculous name for a political party – and we got 5.1% support so we got three MPs into parliament and since then these three MPs have been doing a great job and it is what people want to see because we tripled our support to 15% and have 10 MPs.
