Progress Party (Denmark)
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Template:Politics of Denmark Image:Dk-fp-logo.png The Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet) is a Danish political party, formed in 1973. Its founder, the former lawyer Mogens Glistrup, gained huge popularity in Denmark after he appeared on Danish television, showing that he paid 0 % in income tax. The party was placed on the far right of the political spectrum, as it supported economic liberalism, believed in radical tax cuts (including removing the income tax altogether), and also vowed to cut government spending. An example is the suggestion to replace the entire department of defence with an answering machine with the recorded message "we surrender". The party entered the Danish parliament, the Folketing, the same year in the 1973 Danish parliamentary election with 28 out of 179 seats, making it the second-largest party of the parliament, though it did not form a part of the ruling coalition because the others parties refused to cooperate with it. During the 1980s the party increased its influence, however it ended abruptly due to internal strife.
The party gradually lost most of the support it had among the population, and in 1995, a number of party members rebelled (after a long internal fight for power), most notably Pia Kjærsgaard, the leader at that time of the Progress Party, and formed the now much more popular Danish People's Party.
By the time of the 2001 parliamentary election, the Progress Party had lost almost all of its support and received less than one percent of the vote. The party did not run in the 2005 parliamentary election. It did however run for the local and regional elections in November 2005. The party generally received less than one percent of the votes (though with several local exceptions), and got one member elected in the county of Morsø.
External links
da:Fremskridtspartiet de:Fremskridtspartiet sv:Fremskridtspartiet