After the parliamentary elections on Sunday, Sweden does not yet have a recognizable governing majority. The advantage calculated on Monday morning of just one mandate for the middle-right camp could tilt in one direction or the other in the coming days. The country is now eagerly awaiting Wednesday, when the counting of the votes of Swedes abroad and of those citizens who had already voted in the run-up to the actual election day begins.
The difference between the two camps is currently 47,000 votes, the number of votes still to be counted is estimated at more than 200,000. Observers believe that the right-wing camp has a better chance of winning, since in past elections the Swedes living abroad tended more towards the middle-class camp. “Sweden seems to be heading for a change of power,” speculated the tabloid, which is traditionally close to the Social Democrats, on Monday Aftonbladet. It would be the end of Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s social democratic government. But nothing is decided yet.
Meanwhile, the parties began to position themselves on Monday after an unusual election night that opened up “a new era for Sweden” one way or the other, according to the newspaper Gothenburg Post meant. Not only was this the first election before which the bourgeois-liberal parties had offered the previously shunned right-wing populist Sweden Democrats (SD) cooperation – the SD actually managed a big surprise and overtook the bourgeois moderates in the electoral favour. At the moment they are a little over 20 percent. “The clear winners are the Sweden Democrats,” stated the public broadcaster SVT.
“Incredibly ridiculous,” etched the Sweden Democrats
Originally, the Sweden Democrats were offered the role of a supporter party, from which the bourgeois-liberal bloc wanted to be elected and tolerated. On Sunday and Monday, the statements made by leading SD politicians indicated that the right-wing populists wanted their new strength to be duly rewarded. SD Chairman Jimmie Åkesson had already said on Sunday that they wanted to “sit in the government”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/.”Everything is now on the table,” said SD Secretary General Richard Jomshof on Monday, who thought that one must now also talk about “the post of prime minister and ministerial posts” for the SD. Four years ago, the Sweden Democrats were treated like outcasts, wrote Gothenburg Post. “Now they can set the tone for government cooperation.”
Then the bickering began. The Liberals, part of the bourgeois bloc and traditionally skeptical of right-wing populists, immediately vowed to stand in the way of the SD minister’s request: “The Liberals will not let the Sweden Democrats into the government,” said Liberal MEP Karin Karlsbro dem Swedish radio. An admission that SD General Secretary Jomshof countered as “incredibly ridiculous” and “a kind of SD Tourette”.
SD party leader Jimmie Åkesson arrived at the moderate party headquarters on Monday afternoon to explore the first modalities of possible cooperation. However, the first dispute on Monday showed what difficult government negotiations the Swedes can expect. This does not only apply to the right camp. In the event of a majority, the Social Democrats would also have to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable positions of their supporters from the Left on the one hand and from the economically liberal Center Party on the other.
No matter which side wins, they will probably only have a wafer-thin majority in the Reichstag. For the stability of the country, the prospects are not too good. “We could face a term in office that will be as chaotic as the one we just left behind,” the SVT commentator predicted.