Free wireless Internet and public transport; voting rights for over-14s: These are just some of the policies of the Pirate Party, which on Sunday spectacularly won its first seats in a German state parliament.
Hailed by mass circulation daily Bild as an “election sensation,” the party clinched about 9 percent of the vote in Sunday’s regional poll in Berlin, which was won by the Social Democratic Party and their popular mayor, Klaus Wowereit.
The Pirates, a youth movement with origins in Scandinavia and now active in about 20 countries, has been in Germany for five years and is beginning to shed its image as a “party for geeks.”
Photo: Reuters
The election win has thrust the party, and its leader, into the limelight.
“From IT-nerd to full-time politician,” said the Financial Times Deutschland online edition introducing a profile of Andreas Baum, the head of the group.
Its supporters and leaders are young and well-educated. Most of those who voted for the party were under 30, according to an election analysis by television channel ZDF.
“Ask your children why you should vote for the Pirates,” one of its election posters runs.
“We have the questions, you have the answers,” another says.
Thirty-three-year-old telecoms engineer Baum, who was chosen by lot, told ZDF after the results: “We’re going to get to work ... people will hear from us, of that you can be sure.”
“Our grace period is over,” Matthias Schrade, another senior member, told reporters after the results.
“Now we have to show that we want to get things moving,” added Schrade, one of about 1,000 -Pirates gathered in the grungy Berlin district of Kreuzberg to celebrate the results.
The party can expect to secure about 15 seats in the 130-seat Berlin regional parliament, according to initial calculations.
Campaigning mainly via the Internet, the Pirates spent less than a quarter of the 1.7 million euros (US$2.3 million) shelled out by the victorious SPD party.
Their manifesto can be summed up in one word: “Transparency.”
“We want to make public all data, all administrative procedures,” said Martin Delius, a 27-year-old IT engineer.
On their online editions, major German dailies focused nearly as much on the Pirates as the winners of the election.
“The election success in Berlin will give the Pirates a powerful tailwind,” the Freie Presse daily said.
“If the political rising stars manage to sail nicely with the wind and get competent people at the wheel, then [Sunday’s] victory may be more than just a warning shot,” the paper added.
Observers put the Pirates’ success down to a protest vote at mainstream politics, a theme echoed by Simon Weiss, a 26-year-old mathematics student and party supporter.
“The way politics is done annoys me,” he said.
“Either I do something myself, or nothing will happen”, added Weiss, who described himself as a political “idealist.”
What all Pirates have in common is a desire for “better politics,” he said, adding: “There are plenty of people who think like me.”
However, other observers castigated the established parties, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), for allowing such a party into the parliament.
“If the situation in the country were not so serious, you could put the success of the Pirate Party down as a ‘Berlin speciality.’ In other words, things are just a little bit different in the capital,” the Rhein Zeitung daily said. “But in fact, the Pirates’ victory makes a mockery of the established parties. Apart from the Pirates, no one should be celebrating this election, least of all the FDP.”
According to partial results from Berlin, the FDP were the big losers in Sunday’s election, with a mere 1.8 percent of the votes cast.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was