How Sweden elected its first female prime minister under dramatic circumstances
Although Sweden is world-renowned for maintaining gender equality, Sweden recently had its first female prime minister.
Magdalena Andersson took over the post after completing an agreement with the Left Party to increase pensions in exchange for its support.
But within a few hours, she was forced to resign. Her party, the Social Democrats, announced that she was resigning after the younger partner in the two-party coalition, the Green Party, withdrew after the Riksdag’s rejection of the coalition’s budget proposal.
The Greens’ leader Per Bolund said that his party would not accept the opposition’s budget, “which was drawn up for the first time by the far right”. The small center party then left the government, saying that a planned tax cut on petrol would lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions – a policy that hit the core of the party’s creed.
Andersson received a second blow when the Riksdag approved an alternative budget presented by the opposition consisting of the conservative Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the right-wing extremist Sweden Democrats.
At the moral level, Andersson remarked: “There is a constitutional practice that a coalition government should resign when a party leaves. I do not want to lead a government whose legitimacy will be questioned. ”
Andersson’s resignation lowered the country in a period of political haze, but there was no reason for dismay as the country’s democratic institutions were steadily intact and had always stood the test of time. Many members of the Riksdag in Sweden gave Magdalena Andersson standing ovations on November 24 after she announced her resignation.
Speaker of the Riksdag Andreas Norlén accepted her resignation and said that he would contact the party leaders before deciding on the next measure.
However, a graduate of the prestigious Stockholm School of Economics, Andersson, informed the speaker that she was prepared to lead a minority government. Her Social Democratic party has only 100 seats in parliament with 349 seats.
In the event that the politicians barely chose Andersson to lead the government again – less than a week after she had resigned within a few hours after she took office. [Of relevance to Malaysia is the Swedish constitutional provision that states that prime ministers can govern as long as a majority in parliament – at least 175 MPs – are not against them. For the record, 174 rejected Andersson’s appointment, 117 approved, with 57 abstaining.]
Andersson is now facing the tricky task of governing on the basis of a budget formulated in part by the three opposition parties.
Nordic nations show the way
Surprisingly, Sweden has lagged behind other Nordic countries where women have been elected prime ministers much earlier.
Denmark and Iceland have had and still have women as prime ministers.
Mette Frederiksen has been Denmark’s Prime Minister since 2019.
Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who was recently re-elected Iceland’s Prime Minister, has been in office since 2017.
Finland’s True Mirella Marin has been Prime Minister since 2019.
In Norway, Erna Solberg was Prime Minister from 2013 to October 2021. Many remember Solberg as the Prime Minister who was fined NOK 20,000 (RM9 700) by the police in February for violating the rules on physical distance during a family reunion to celebrate her 60 -anniversary.
Proportional representation gives fairer results
Sweden has time and again shown democracies all over the world the invaluable lessons of democratic values, where parliamentarians can be seen acting with great dignity.
Its system of proportional representation in parliament also ensures that all political parties are fairly represented in parliament. The system protects against all confusion of constituencies, and therefore the votes of the people are fairly represented in Parliament.
If Malaysia had adopted a proportional representation system, the results of our parliamentary and state election results would have been very different. For example, proportional representation would have ensured a fairer representation in the recent Malacca state election, where Barisan Nasional won 21 of the 28 seats in the state assembly, despite receiving only 2.6% more popular votes than its nearest rival , Pakatan Harapan, which received only five seats.
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