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Pirate Party fails to win seats in Swedish election
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 21 September 2010
The Swedish version of The Pirate Party has failed to win representation in the country’s parliament after reportedly securing less than 1% of the overall vote in the nation’s latest general election.
As previously reported, the Swedish version of the political organisation, which supports a radical revamp of copyright laws, took 7% of the Swedish vote in last year’s European elections, giving them seats in the European Parliament.
To get a seat in the Swedish national parliament the party would have needed 4% of the vote, considerably less than they won last year but rather a lot more than they achieved in this week’s Swedish general election.
Last year, of course, the party was buoyed by the publicity that surrounded the trial of The Pirate Bay Four, at which many web-users and younger voters felt the founders of the rogue file-sharing website were unfairly treated. Plus, minority interest parties invariably do better in European than national elections, partly because many voters don’t really care too much about who represents them in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Had The Pirate Party got a seat in the Swedish parliament they would have used it to push for copyright reform in the country, and to speak out against the introduction of increased online protection for rights owners. They also suggested they’d use their party privileges to host Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay on the parliament’s own servers, which would give them protection from some Swedish laws.
Commenting on the result, Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak: “The Swedish Pirate Party did its best election campaign ever. We had more media, more articles, more debates, more handed-out flyers than ever. [But] unfortunately, the wind was not in our sails this time, as it was with the European elections”.
