Iceland's Pirate Party wins 10 seats, will need unlikely coalition to rule Iceland's Pirate Party has won ten seats in the nation's 63-seat parliament, the Alþingi. Píratar, to use the party's Icelandic name, secured 14.5 per cent of the vote, below the 22.6 per cent reported in polls last week but at the upper range of party officials' expectations. Píratar had three seats in the last Alþingi, so is …
It's refreshing to see so many different parties in play there. It's a far cry from the hopeless two-party duopoly (e.g. Deomcrat/Republican or Liberal/Labor) that prevails in most western democracies, with either one is as bad as the other and nothing changes regardless of who you vote for. Iceland seems to have got it right by enabling small parties instead of the false-democracy corporate oligarchy we have.
The more I read about Iceland, the more I want to go and live there.
Anywhere that can disrupt land and road development so as not to disturb the little people and faerie folk is more than OK by me. If I could have chosen where to be born it would have been Iceland. I wish both of my stupid countries (Britain and USA) could be more like this fabulous land. If I could convince my sub tropical wife to move somewhere decidedly cool I'd be gone in a heartbeat.
I believe the reason that democracy works better in iceland than in other western countries is the size. With only 310 000 people, it is far easier to control the people in power, and to quickly gather support for new parties, than in a country with 50 million people, where individual initiatives easily get lost in the noise.
I think that democracy only works well at the city level, in which it was first invented. As the population increases, democracy collapses and transformed into a kind of new nobility where new generations of political families take over after the old generation, and very few regular people ever manage to become "ennobled" as politicians.
This is my highly unscientific and subjective opinion! ;)
I totally agree with you. Democracy can only exist when citizens are directly engaged by what is happening around them.
The current situation is that a government exists in the stratosphere of the country, where ordinary citizens have no access because "national security" or some other excuse for secret negotiations. To save appearances, citizens are fed the fairy tale of elections and that their vote matters when, in truth, everything is arranged to ensure that citizens vote the way a very small group intend them to. The distancing of the citizenry from the meetings where actual, important decisions are being made ensures that the ruling class can go about their business without answering to much anybody that isn't in the know.
There should be no secrecy in a truly democratic regime. Everything the President says should be on YouTube, streamed live and saved for free access by anyone who wishes to see it.
It would throw a humongous monkey wrench in the current backstabbing diplomatic affairs and private enterprise lobbying, but it would do a world of good as far as actual Democracy is concerned.
Obviously it will never happen. Wayyy too much money/influence at stake.
Indeed; and those politicians are, on the whole, keen on even larger organizations such as the EU, taking the power even further from the people. The EU, in particular, seems keen to promote the idea that smaller states (such as nations, or even smaller ones where democracy has already been shown to work well) must inherently be at war with each other; which is very convenient for them.
On the other hand, modern communications has started to shrink the world, in the sense of bringing more contacts and information into reach, so effective democracy could become workable on a larger scale than has been done so far; and developments such as Pirate Parties and DemoEx show that there is an alternative to "government as distinct from citizens".
I agree,
When you have a 2 party system, the country will vote for the one they don't hate the most, rather than the one they like the most...
The whole system needs ripping up and starting from scratch, because lunatics are running the country..
Unfortunately the lib dems killed any progress they made when they renaged on their promises..
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