Sweden’s Riksdag elects a conservative prime minister – World News
Photo: Canadian Press
The Riksdag on Monday elected Ulf Kristersson — the party leader of the conservative moderates — as prime minister at the head of a coalition supported by a once radical right-wing party.
Kristersson, 59, was elected with 176-173 votes. His government is expected to be presented on Tuesday. His three-party coalition does not have a majority, but in Sweden prime ministers can govern as long as there is not a parliamentary majority against them.
After a month of talks with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, Kristersson presented an agreement that gave them an unprecedented position of influence in Swedish politics. They took over 20% of the vote in the September 11 election.
Kristersson’s centre-right coalition government is made up of his party and the Liberals and Christian Democrats, but he has said it will continue in “close cooperation” with the Sweden Democrats. He is dependent on the Sweden Democrats’ support to secure a majority in the Riksdag, which allows the party to influence the government’s policy from the sidelines even without government seats.
The Sweden Democrats were founded in the 1980s by right-wing extremists. They toned down their rhetoric and excluded openly racist members under Jimmie Åkesson, who took over the party in 2005.
Åkesson, who does not consider his party to be far-right, said he would have preferred government seats to the Sweden Democrats, but he supported the deal that would give his party influence over government policy, including immigration and criminal justice.
Since the election, the populist party has been given the chairmanships of four parliamentary committees and with it the opportunity to exercise more influence in ordinary Swedish politics.
Kristersson will replace Magdalena Andersson, who leads Sweden’s largest party, the Social Democrats, who are now in opposition. He supports Sweden’s historic attempt to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
The centre-left opposition harshly criticized the new government coalition, with Lena Hallgren from the Social Democrats calling it “a strange construction”.
Many said it represented a paradigm shift in Sweden and would damage its image in the world as an equal and tolerant nation. Nooshi Dadgostar, the leader of the former Communist Left Party, said her parents, who fled Iran, could never have imagined that Sweden would embark on an authoritarian path.
“What is happening now in Sweden is terrifying,” she told the Riksdag.