Pirates enter another parliament: Congratulations to the Czech Pirate Party!

Czech Pirate Party 2017

The Czech Pirate Party is entering Parliament at an estimated 9.7% with half the votes counted. The Czech pirates have fought long and hard, and overcome frustrating setbacks like missing the parliamentary threshold by just 0.2% in the last election. Congratulations to Ivan Bartoš, Mikuláš Ferjenčík, Jakub Michálek, and the entire Czech team!

The Czech Pirate Party is the fourth to reach a national or federal parliament, after Sweden, Germany, and Iceland. The party leader, Ivan Bartoš, has been hanging in there for as far back as I can remember the movement – I can’t recall if we first met at the international meeting in Friedrichshafen in 2011 or in Prague in 2012. I’ve met with numerous other passionate Czech pirates over the years, whose hard work finally paid off in the elections closing today.

This is the ninth election for the Czech Pirates, who have been doing well in some local elections earlier, and even have a Pirate Mayor in the city of Mariánské Lázně. However, this is the Czech Pirates’ first entry into legislation on a nationwide poll, and as it stands with half the votes counted, it seems Europe and the Czech Republic is about to gain just-over-fifteen new pirate legislators.

Some media will probably focus on the fact that another dark horse came out of nowhere and got about 30% of the votes in this Czech election, but make no mistake, the Pirates are in this for the long game and is the bigger difference in this election. (Disclaimer: The names I mention here are just people I happen to have met personally.) Go, go, go!

Congratulations to the entire Czech team on your hard work and huge success — and for some, your new job!

The photo is from this election campaign video.

Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. He works as Head of Privacy at the no-log VPN provider Private Internet Access; with his other 40 hours, he's developing an enterprise grade bitcoin wallet and HR system for activism.

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  1. Rick Falkvinge

    The link to Radio Praha is broken, they took down the story and replaced it with another URL for no good reason.

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