Andersson with a view to becoming Sweden’s first female prime minister
Sweden is moving towards having its first female prime minister with left-wing politician Magdalena Andersson, called the “bulldozer”, who will be elected head of the main governing party on Thursday.
The 54-year-old Minister of Finance and heir to Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven will face a struggle for political survival when he takes over the reins of the Social Democrats ahead of contentious general elections scheduled for September 2022.
The only candidate to stand, the academic and former competition swimmer, will be elected party leader at the Social Democrats’ annual congress in Gothenburg at 16:00 (1500 GMT).
Lofven has announced that he will resign after she becomes party leader, albeit without a time frame. When he leaves, the only thing that stands between Andersson and writing history as the first woman to form a Swedish government is a vote in the Riksdag.
The feat sounds almost anachronistic in a country that has long fought for gender equality, but which has sometimes cursed senior women in politics.
Anna Lindh, Foreign Minister and Social Democrat colleague, died after a knife attack in a department store in 2003.
Mona Sahlin, the first woman to lead the Social Democrats and a deputy prime minister, was first sidelined by a 1995 spending scandal involving Toblerone chocolate, and later resigned in 2011 after an election defeat.
Provided that Lofven resigns and Andersson wins the subsequent parliamentary vote, she will be Sweden’s first female prime minister.
– ‘Hard-working’ –
The job may even prove to be a poisoned lime – she will be tasked with trying to keep her party in power at a time when it is close to its historically low approval rating.
Andersson describes himself as a “nice, hard-working woman” who likes to be in charge.
In political circles, she has built up a reputation for straightforwardness that can rub some people the wrong way in a country where courtesy is the law of the land.
A recent program that profiled her on the public TV channel SVT was entitled “The Bulldozer”.
– People even say that they are afraid of her, which is a bit funny, says Anders Lindberg, political editor-in-chief of Aftonbladet, who describes himself as an independent Social Democrat.
“This kind of elite political scientist or professor of economics says they are afraid of her,” he added.
Minister of Finance under Lofven for seven years, in Brussels she defended fiscal restraint when Sweden joined Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands as the “frugal four” who advised on a more restrained European Covid-19 recovery plan.
– Simguld –
She is a close friend of Lofven but comes from a different background than the former welder who became prime minister.
She was born in the university city of Uppsala and is the only daughter of a university professor and a teacher who first made a name for herself in the water, where she twice won gold in the Swedish junior-SM.
In parallel with her studies at the Stockholm School of Economics – and a period at Harvard – she immersed herself in life as a “sosse”, after joining the Social Democrats’ youth union as a 16-year-old. In 1996, she became an aide to Prime Minister Göran Persson.
“I think she is very anxious now to present herself as someone who has done the footwork … But of course she is one from an academic elite”, says Jonas Hinnfors, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg, to AFP.
The mother of two who is married to a professor enjoys rock climbing and the heavy metal band System of a Down.
Still relatively unknown to the public, she will have less than a year to put herself on the map to avoid a fleeting grip on power.
She can also fight to prove that she is her own person, rather than a third iteration of the Lofven government, Lindberg believes.
“It will be the narrative conflict in the Swedish election,” he said.
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