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Sweden’s anti-immigrant Democrats will have their say on the new administration’s new policies from a confusing leadership agreement.
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By Cristina Anderson
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden’s parliament on Monday approved a new right-wing government that includes the Liberal and Christian Democratic parties, but without an official role for Sweden’s anti-immigrant Democrats, without whom the right-wing bloc would have won its narrow victory last month.
Despite being the bloc’s largest party after winning a fifth of the national vote on Sept. 11, the Sweden Democrats will have a supporting role in the new government, which will be headed by new Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of the Moderate Party.
Normally, the party with the most votes would be included in the government, but because of ideological differences and neo-Nazi roots and the intolerant policies of the Sweden Democrats, the other parties needed to give them a formal role in the coalition, said Jonas Hinnfors, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg.
“This is realpolitik,” Hinnfors said.
The Liberal Party conditioned its coalition on the exclusion of the Sweden Democrats from a seat in government.
The Sweden Democrats’ value to the new government, agreed in a 62-page pact, is high, analysts say, and includes the party’s cooperation in seven policy areas, in addition to corrupt justice and immigration.
The document focuses heavily on crime and immigration spaces, the priorities of the Sweden Democrats, and is “very brief and vague” on other key issues, adding tax reform, health care and education, Hinnfors said.
“There is nothing about foreign policy, the EU, NATO or defense spending,” he added, referring to Russia’s war against Ukraine and security in Europe and the Baltic region in particular.
The pact calls for an inquiry into the ban on begging, led by the Sweden Democrats and widely criticized by the Liberals.
Jimmie Akesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats, presented the pact as a victory that will largely satisfy his party’s crusade promises.
“A replacement of the government will also have to lead to a paradigm shift in immigration and integration policy, and to me there is no doubt that this agreement means just that,” he told reporters.
The pact basically covers the Sweden Democrats’ policy priorities, adding duplicate sentences for gang-related offenses, expanding police powers in certain neighborhoods to prevent and search for guns without probable cause, and restricting immigration to the absolute minimum required by the EU.
The agreement also provides for the creation of committees composed of members of the Sweden Democrats and the other 3 parties to expand the new government policies.
“If there are opinions, they can veto a measure,” said Sverker Gustavsson, a political scientist at Uppsala University of the Sweden Democrats.
The deal gives the Sweden Democrats precisely what they wanted: the most powerful influence imaginable without the duty to sit in the new government, Gustavsson said.
“It gives them a lot of occasional power,” he said. “It’s ideal for them. “
The Liberal Party turned out to have made the greatest concessions: in matters of corrupt justice and individual freedoms. Observers said some of those concessions crossed red lines for the party.
“We are on the verge of something very different in key spaces of Swedish society: our appointments with others, the forces of the state versus individual freedoms and what it is like to be a foreigner in this country,” M. Hinnfors. said a
The Sweden Democrats could be more comfortable outside the government, he added. “They are in the position of final blackmail. The government wants them and they can withdraw them at any time.
This is the first time an anti-immigration far-right has played a supporting role in a Scandinavian government without a seat in the closet. The Danish People’s Party supported the ruling conservative liberal parties for 10 years until 2011.
“They were very successful and governed Danish immigration policy,” Hinnfors said.
Parliament voted 176 to 173 for Kristersson to take the reins as minister. He will succeed Magdalena Andersson, Prime Minister since last November.
Amid complaints from the Liberal Party, which many see as opposed to its own ideology in backing the ruling coalition, Andersson said the Social Democrats were open to cooperating “with all the intelligent forces that need Sweden to look more like Sweden. “The same goes for liberals.
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