The leader of Sweden’s conservative Moderates party, Ulf Kristersson, was formally tasked with forming a government on Monday, following the victory of a right-wing and far-right coalition in the September 11 legislative elections.
This Monday afternoon, the president of the Riksdag (Swedish parliament), Andreas Norlén, invited Kristersson, as planned, to gather a sufficient majority to succeed the Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson as prime minister.
The Swedish right has never been in power with the support of the extreme right, the result of a rapprochement initiated three years ago by Ulf Kristersson.
“I have decided to entrust the leader of the moderates, Ulf Kristersson, with the task of analyzing the conditions for forming a government that can be accepted by parliament,” Andreas Norlén announced at a press conference.
During this morning, the president of the Riksdag (349 seats) received the party leaders, in what constitutes a kind of prelude to the appointment of a potential new prime minister.
Kristersson should be able to win the support of all four parties in the winning legislative bloc, which includes the centre-right Liberals, the far-right Swedish Democrats (SD), the Moderates and the Christian Democrats.
After his meeting with the president of the Swedish parliament, the leader of the Moderates assured that the formation of a government will take “some time”.
The main problem is the place that Jimmie Akesson’s SD occupies in the majority, which was the second most voted party in the elections, after Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats.
Although, before the vote, they agreed with the other three parties of the right-wing bloc that, if they win, the leader of the Moderates would be the candidate for president of the Government, the SD expresses its willingness to be part of the new executive, a hypothesis to which the remaining three oppose.
The most likely scenario will be a government made up of the moderates with the Christian Democrats, and possibly the Liberals, and Sweden’s right-wing Democrat extremists simply being a supporting force in parliament to push through new legislation.
In exchange for giving up having ministries in the new Swedish government, the far-right party will be able to negotiate political advances on issues that are on its agenda, or even the position of the next speaker of parliament.
Negotiations “are going well and everything is being discussed in one package,” Akesson said Monday.
With 73 parliamentary seats, the SD will be the main party in the future majority, ahead of the Moderates (68), the Christian Democrats (19) and the Liberals (16), an unprecedented electoral result in Sweden.
In total, the majority that it will form is fragile, with 176 parliamentary seats compared to 173 for the center-left bloc, led by Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats (107 seats).
The outgoing prime minister temporarily occupies the head of the Swedish Government until her successor takes office, which will only happen after its approval by the newly elected parliament, whose first plenary session is scheduled for September 27.
Although Swedish citizens went to the polls on Sunday, September 11, the vote was so close that it was not until the night of Wednesday, September 14, when 99.9% of the votes had been counted, that the leader of the Swedish party far-right SD, Jimmie Akesson declared the victory of the coalition formed by the four right-wing parties.
The party was formed in 1988 as a neo-Nazi, and despite softening some of its positions and toning down its discourse in recent years, it has yet to completely shake off that stigma.
The SD campaigned with a speech focused on promises to fight crime and impose strong restrictions on immigration, bearing in mind that Sweden has been the scene, in recent years, of an increase in gang violence – which Since the beginning of this year, 273 people have been hit by firearms, 47 of them fatal, according to police statistics. 74 people, including innocent bystanders, were also injured in these shootings.
Last Thursday, after her meeting with Norlén in which she formally tendered her resignation as prime minister, Magdalena Andersson declared: “If the moderates have other ideas and want to cooperate with me instead of the Swedish democrats, my door will be open.”
The outgoing prime minister also added that she is willing to work with all parties except the far right.
Andersson, who heads the country’s largest party, resigned less than a year after becoming the first woman to lead a government in Sweden.
Her appointment as prime minister was a historic milestone for Sweden, seen for decades as one of the most progressive countries in Europe on gender equality, but which has never had a woman in the highest political office.
Magdalena Andersson starred in Sweden’s historic request to join NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Western defense bloc) after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 this year.
Source: TSF
