Voting has started in Iceland in one of the tightest elections in years, with the anti-establishment Pirate party on course to make major gains that could propel it into government for the first time.

Polls published on Friday showed the ruling centre-right coalition on about 37% of the vote, while the opposition parties led by the Pirates, founded barely four years ago by a group of activists, anarchists and former hackers, stood at 47%.

That could leave the small, newly established Vidreisn – meaning “reform” or “regeneration” – party in the role of kingmaker. While broadly pro-European and liberal, it has yet to say which way it will jump. Coalition negotiations could be long and tortuous.

Riding a wave of public anger at perceived political corruption in the wake of the 2008 financial crash and the Panama Papers scandal in April, the Pirate party campaigns for direct democracy, full government transparency, individual freedoms and the fight against corruption.

Its radical platform, which also includes decriminalising drugs, offering asylum to whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and relaxing restrictions on the use of the bitcoin virtual currency, has the backing of 21% of Icelanders, polls suggest, making it the country’s second-biggest party.

Its figurehead is Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a 49-year-old MP, poet and former WikiLeaks collaborator who has said she has no ambition to be prime minister but wants to sweep away a “corrupt and dysfunctional system”.

Of the Pirates, she says: “We do not define ourselves as left or right, but rather as a party that focuses on the systems. In other words, we consider ourselves hackers – so to speak – of our current outdated systems of government.”

Part of a global anti-establishment trend typified by parties on the left such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, and on the right Germany’s AfD and Britain’s Ukip, the Pirates advocate an “unlimited right” for citizens to be involved in political decision-making, proposing new legislation and deciding on it in national referendums.

If the party fares as well as polls have predicted, it aims to form a new coalition government in the country’s 63-seat parliament, the Althingi, with three other broadly leftist opposition parties, the Left-Greens, the Social Democrats and the Bright Future Movement.

“We think that these parties can cooperate very well, they have many common issues,” said Katríin Jakobsdóttir, leader of the Left-Green movement. “I think it will be a very feasible governmental choice.”

The Pirates have, however, ruled out any possibility of going into government with either of the current two ruling parties, the centre-right Independence party and centrist Progressive party.

Saturday’s election was prompted by the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Davið Gunnlaugsson, who became the first major casualty of the Panama Papers in April after the leaked legal documents revealed he and his w

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read full article at source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/29/iceland-election-voting-begins-with-opposition-parties-ahead-in-polls-pirate-party