The Political Party was a satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 but nevertheless real political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 created by the Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 comedians Johan Golden

Johan Golden

Johan Golden is a Norwegian comedian, musician, politician and radio and television presenter. He became known through the radio programme XL, and later through the television programme En L.U.N...

 and Atle Antonsen

Atle Antonsen

Atle Antonsen is a Norwegian comedian. He has participated in and contributed to several television and radio shows for NRK including XL and XLTV , Uti vår hage , Team Antonsen , Tre brødre som ikke er brødre , Etaten and Uti vår hage 2...

. The party made its first entry in Norwegian politics during the Norwegian general election of 2001, promoting the two leaders with slogans like "Atle Antonsen — Working for all the people" and "Johan Golden — Your slave in parliament" (the latter one raising some eyebrows, as Golden is of black Caribbean descent). Golden was also fronted as the party's candidate for Prime Minister

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

.

According to the party's platform, any representative of the party elected to parliament was to vote whatever the people wanted him or her to vote. To find out what the people wanted, they were to hold a poll on their web-site for every parliamentary issue the party got involved in. They also claimed that, were the people to vote 70% in favour and 30% against an issue, they would work 70% for it and 30% against it. Thus the Political Party in some sense promoted the thought of direct democracy

Direct democracy

Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...

. The party program states that the Political Party is founded on the ideals of freedom

Freedom (political)

Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...

, justice

Justice

Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...

 and politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

.

In the general election of 2001 the party got nearly 1% of all votes made. The result was rather different in the school-elections where the Political Party got 8% of the votes. If these had been parliamentary elections, the party would have gained approximately 12 representatives in parliament.

The Political Party was active only in the general election of 2001.

External links and Reference

• The official web pages of the Political Party (Norwegian)An electoral propaganda poster that depicts the Political Party's idea of direct democracy.
• Electoral poster of Johan Golden and Atle Antonsen.