Sweden’s first female prime minister resigns in less than 12 hours | Sweden
Sweden’s first female prime minister, Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson, has resigned less than 12 hours into her job when her coalition collapsed, putting the country in further political uncertainty.
Andersson said that a decision by the Green Party, the junior party in the coalition, to quit had forced her to resign. She added that she had told the Speaker of Parliament that she hoped to be appointed Prime Minister again as head of a one-party government.
The Green Party said they would leave the government after the coalition’s budget bill was rejected by parliament.
“I have asked the speaker to be relieved of my duties as Prime Minister,” Andersson said at a news conference. “I am ready to become Prime Minister of a Social Democratic one-party government.”
In a turbulent course of events, Andersson had earlier in the day become the first woman to be elected prime minister of Sweden after concluding a last-minute agreement with the Left Party to increase pensions in exchange for its support in Wednesday’s vote.
But the small center party withdrew its support for Andersson’s budget due to the concessions to the Left and left the budget with insufficient votes to pass in the Riksdag.
The Riksdag then adopted an alternative budget which was presented by the opposition’s conservative Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the right-wing extremist Sweden Democrats.
The death blow came when Green Party leader Per Bolund said his party could not tolerate the opposition’s “historic budget, drawn up for the first time by the far right”, and left the government. The Greens said, among other things, that a planned tax cut on petrol would lead to higher emissions.
As a result, Andersson, who took over as prime minister after Stefan Löfven, as head of a minority coalition with the support of the Left and Center parties, had no choice but to submit his resignation.
The Speaker of the Riksdag will now decide on the next step in the process of finding a new government.
“There is a constitutional practice that a coalition government should resign when a party ends,” Andersson told reporters. “I do not want to lead a government whose legitimacy will be called into question.”
Speaker Andreas Norlén said that he had accepted Andersson’s resignation and would contact the party leaders before deciding on Thursday how to proceed.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report