On Sunday 16 December 2012 the Pirate Party of Norway managed to reach the 5000 signatures, the amount required to form a political party in Norway. Their next goal is to enter the Norwegian Parliament during the 2013 elections.

As we wrote earlier PPNO had their start-up meeting in June which was attended by 17 persons. They faced the challenge of organizing themselves and gathering 5000 signatures before the end of the year to start a political party. Today, 18 December 2012, they have gathered 5255 signatures and more are coming by mail.

Pirate Times held a discussion with Geir Aaslid, the pirate leader of PPNO. The Norwegian Pirates are mainly inspired by their German and Swedish neighbors. The political program is basic for now, but will be expanded with the help of liquid democracy and their general assembly in the beginning of next year.

Pirate Party Norway is a pro digital technology, block independent party that stands for strengthened policy, reform of copyright and patents, wide democracy, free non-commercial file sharing, statutory net neutrality, individual rights, and digital modernization of Norway with a stronger focus on technology, innovation and science.

It is also the party’s purpose to increase interest in politics based on basic democratic attitudes and working to get as many members elected to the country’s representative bodies as possible.

This is the third attempt at starting up a Pirate Party in Norway. Geir says that it’s a “hell of a lot of work collecting 5000 signatures”. The reason they reached the goal this time is that they have a better team and much help in reaching people with the help of their spear-head Håkon Wium Lie (CTO of Opera Software and the father of CSS). Another factor is that the time was right, Norway has agreed to implement the Data Retention Directive but they have still to agree about the details on how to do this. This has created a frustration and according to Geir a huge majority of the Norwegian population is against this implementation.

PPNO will have their General Assembly on February 23rd (preliminary date) to further broaden their political platform and work on improving their organization further. Seeing that Norway is not a part of the EU they have no opinions on the PPEU organization yet but they hope to work closely together with other Pirate Parties with much co-ordination across borders. Anna Troberg, the leader of PPSE, says that she is looking forward to a future collaboration with PPNO.

Pirate Times will hopefully be reporting more about future PPNO achievments. The next step for PPNO is their GA in February and thereafter sending in a list of 169 parliamentary candidates by the end of March. The parliamentary elections in Norway will take place in September next year where the Pirate Party hopes to enter their parliament through roughly 20.000 votes in Oslo, taking 1 ot of 19 seats for the County of Oslo, or by getting 4% of the national votes in order to gain one of the threshold seats. If they manage to enter parliament next year their long term goal would be to become the 4th largest party in Norway, requiring approximately 6% of the votes.

Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA by mtsofan

About Josef Ohlsson Collentine

I’m a dual citizen (American/Swede) and try to integrate my reflections from a more global perspective if possible. I’m the organizational leader for Pirate Times and work actively to strengthen the pirate movement through this work as well as being the international contact for Piratpartiet (PPSE). Elected board member of PPSE for 2015-2018.
If you would like to ask me something I speak English, Swedish and Spanish. Find me on the links below

 

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On Sunday 16 December 2012 the Pirate Party of Norway managed to reach the 5000 signatures, the amount required to form a political party in Norway. Their next goal is…