Julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed paperwork to run for a seat in the Australian senate as a member of the newly formed WikiLeaks party, reported the Australian daily The Age.
The Queensland-born Assange first announced his intention to run in the Sept. 14 federal election last December. According to The Age, he seems to have a pretty good chance of winning: Research by the Australian Labor Party’s internal polling company, UMR Research, indicates that Assange could be quite a competitive candidate in either New South Wales or Victoria.
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The former computer hacker has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault charges. According to Agence France-Presse, he is afraid that he will be sent from Sweden to the United States where officials will question him for the release of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables.
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According to The Age, Australian law permits citizens living overseas to run for office at home. However, it is unclear how Assange intends to run a campaign from the other end of the world or how he will assume office if he wins the election.
It seems that whether Assange wins or not, he already has one staunch supporter: his mother. Christine Assange believed that her son would be “awesome” in the role.
“In the House of Representatives we get to choose between US lackey party number one and US lackey party number two – between the major parties,” the 41-year-old told The Age. “So it will be great to ‘Assange’ the Senate for some Aussie oversight.”
In 2006, Assange established whistleblower website WikiLeaks, where he in 2010 published hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents and diplomatic cables that proved to be huge embarrassments for governments worldwide.
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