Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Wednesday introduced that she would resign after an unprecedented right-wing and far-right bloc narrowly received Sunday’s election.
Out of the Swedish parliament’s 349 seats, the right-wing opposition was set to win 176, thanks partly to a surge by far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), with over 99 p.c of districts counted.
Speaking at a press convention, Andersson, the Social Democrats occasion chief, famous that it was a “narrow majority, but a majority nonetheless.
“So tomorrow I’ll hand in my resignation as prime minister, and the accountability for the continued course of will go to the speaker,” Andersson said.
Sunday’s elections were so close that tens of thousands of votes from abroad and those cast in advance had to be counted to validate the results.
‘Making Sweden great again’
Never before has a Swedish government relied on the support of the anti-immigration and nationalist SD, who became the big winners of the vote, by gaining more than three percentage points.
With 20.6 percent of votes counted so far, the party emerged as Sweden’s second largest party behind the Social Democrats, which have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s.
However, the post of Prime Minister will in all likelihood go to the leader of the Moderate Party, Ulf Kristersson, as SD leader Jimmie Akesson is unable to unite all four parties to head the government.
“I now start the work of forming a brand new and powerful authorities,” Kristersson said in a video posted to Facebook.
Kristersson, a former gymnast, led a major U-turn for his party when initiating exploratory talks in 2019 with the Sweden Democrats and then deepening their cooperation.
The Christian Democrats, and to a lesser extent the Liberals, later followed suit.
At the same time, the thorny question remains of whether the far-right would be given cabinet posts, which Akesson said late Sunday was their “purpose”.
In a post to Facebook on Wednesday, Akesson thanked “associates of Sweden” around the country.
“Now the work begins of creating Sweden nice once more,” the party leader said.
The Sweden Democrats rose up out of neo-Nazi groups and the “Keep Sweden Swedish” movement in the early 1990s, entering parliament in 2010 with 5.7 percent of votes.
Difficult situation
Long shunned as “pariahs” on the political scene, the party has registered strong growth in each subsequent election as it made efforts to clean up its image.
Its hardline stance on soaring gang shootings and integration set the tone in this year’s election.
The narrow majority also means a right-wing government’s hold on power would be very fragile, with the four parties fiercely opposed on a number of issues, especially the Liberals and Sweden Democrats.
“This is a tough parliamentary scenario,” Gothenburg University political scientist Mikael Gilljam told AFP.
“And then you have got events that do not like one another, the Sweden Democrats and the Liberals” in the identical right-wing bloc, he added.
In such a scenario, just a few disgruntled MPs might find yourself flipping the steadiness of energy.
Behind the SD with 73 seats, 11 greater than within the final elections in 2018, the Moderates have 68 seats (-2), whereas the Christian Democrats have 19 (-3) and the Liberals 16 (-4).
On the left, the Social Democrats climbed to 107 seats (+7) due to managing to get 30.4 p.c of the vote, forward of the Left and Centre occasion (24 seats every) and the Green Party (18).
Then the speaker of the Riksdag, the Swedish Parliament, may give Ulf Kristersson the duty of forming a majority between the 4 events, opening a interval of negotiations.
The election of the brand new head of presidency can not happen earlier than September 27 on the earliest, when parliament re-opens.
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