Sweden’s Prime Minister
Andersson submits resignation
Magdalena Andersson after submitting her formal resignation. photo
© Tim Aro/TT News Agency/AP/dpa
After her electoral defeat, Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson will initially lead an interim government. The conservative Ulf Kristersson can now try to form a government.
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has tendered her resignation as head of government. Now the Reichstag and Parliament President Andreas Norlén have to decide on the process of forming a new government, she said in Stockholm. Until a new government is formed, Andersson will lead an interim government.
Andersson’s Social Democrats were once again clearly the strongest force in the Reichstag elections on Sunday. However, a conservative-right four-party bloc around the challenger Ulf Kristersson from the moderates, including the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, received more mandates overall than the left-wing camp around Andersson. After a preliminary count of more than 99.9 percent of all votes, Kristersson’s side got 176 of the 349 mandates, Andersson’s 173.
Andersson said she had also told Norlén that her door was open to her challenger, Kristersson, should he change his mind and prefer to work with her Social Democrats rather than the Sweden Democrats.
Norlén announced that the process of forming a government would be initiated. After the weekend he will speak to representatives of the eight parliamentary parties. Since the election result was very close and a final result is not expected until the weekend, he said it was reasonable to wait. It was expected that he would give Kristersson the task of forming a government.
According to information from the newspaper “Aftonbladet”, representatives of the four parties of the conservative right-wing bloc have already met today for negotiations. The aim is to agree on a government basis within ten days, the newspaper reported. After the last parliamentary election in 2018, it took a whopping 134 days to form a government under Social Democrat Stefan Löfven – Andersson’s predecessor within the party.