Iceland's Pirate Party leader given mandate to form next gov't

Leader of Iceland's Pirate Party Birgitta Jonsdottir has been formally mandated by the president to form a government following the failure of two successive party leaders to do so, Icelandic media reported on Friday.

Jonsdottir was summoned to meet Icelandic President Gudni Johannesson on Friday afternoon.

After the short meeting, the president announced that Jonsdottir was his choice for another attempt to form a majority coalition, according to online newspaper Iceland Monitor.

"I'm hopeful that all of us will find a way to cooperate," Jonsdottir was quoted as saying by the online magazine Iceland Review.

But she said nothing had changed during talks between the five parties -- the Pirate Party, the Left-Green Movement, the Vidreisn (Revival) party, the Bright Future and the Social Democratic Alliance, which previously failed to reach an agreement to form a government.

This is the cooperation of five parties, she said, adding that the most important issues that need to be addressed are the health care system and the situation in the labor market.

Both Independence Party chairman Bjarni Benediktsson and Left-Green Movement leader Katrin Jakobsdottir had failed to form majority coalition following the parliamentary election on Oct. 29.

The Independence Party, one of the two current ruling parties, won 21 out of the 63 seats in the new parliament after winning 29 percent of the ballots.

However, the centrist Progressive Party, the other ruling party, finished fourth with only eight seats, 11 fewer than what it had gained in the last parliamentary election in 2013.

The Left-Green Movement gained 10 seats with 15.9 percent of votes, while the Pirate Party, which had taken the lead in many pre-election polls over the months, also won 10 seats with 14.5 percent.

The Vidreisn party, the Bright Future and the Social Democratic Alliance also crossed the electoral threshold with seven, four and three seats respectively. Endit