A Dinner Date With Swedish Politics

A few weeks ago I had dinner at City Hall here in Jönköping. There was a small group of us who attended and we met the mayor and other representatives from City Hall.




This got me thinking, I haven’t bored you all with the Politics of Sweden. So I shall write about it now, hopefully this won’t bore you.
The Kingdom of Sweden has a Constitutional Monarch, since 1973 it has been King Carl XVI Gustaf. Since 1975 the monarch has no executive authority. The Government system is similar to that of the UK, headed by the Prime Minister and their Cabinet. The Government sits in the Riksdag with the legislative assembly.




The General Election of 2010

In Sweden they have fixed terms, every 4 years on the third Sunday in September an election is called for the Seats in the Riksdag, 20 County Councils and 290 Municipal assemblies.
To vote you must be 18, Swedish Citizen and at some point have been living in Sweden.
Now this is where it gets a bit messy. There are a choice of 3 ballot papers in the general election. 1) you can hand in a ballot paper with your preferred party, 2) You hand in a ballot with the chosen party and then you can mark your preference of candidate and 3) You are given a blank ballot and you write the party you wish to vote for. The allocation of seats is done on a proportional system meaning that a party that gets 25% of the vote should get around 25% of seats. The candidates are then chosen on 2 criteria, their party ranking and then the preference votes from the electorates. A candidate that gets 8% + preference votes goes to the top of the list, This happens in around 5% of cases.
The Riksdag has 349 seats, 310 are given to elected members with the remaining 39 used as ‘adjustment seats’ ensuring the number of seats matches the number of votes.

Are you still with me?

Well I may lose you now!

In the 2010 election there were 7 major parties which have formed their own alliances prior to the election!
The Governing Centre right alliance called Alliance for Sweden is made up of
Nya Moderata (Moderate Party) Lead by PM Fredrik Reinfeldt
Folkpartiet Liberalerna (Liberal People’s Party)
Centrepartiet (The Centre Party)
Kristdemokraterna (The Christian Democrats)

The Opposition alliance called The Red Green Alliance is made up of
Sveriges Socialdemokratiska (Sweden’s Social Democrats)
Miljöpartiet de Gröna (Green Party)
Vänsterpartiet (The Left Party, {formerly communist})

Things to note:
The social democrats, though in opposition are the largest political party in Sweden. This party has only been out of power from 1976-82, 1991-93 and 2006-Present. This party can boast the longest serving PM from 1947-69 PM Tage Erlander at the time of the 2010 election it was lead by Mona Sahlin however since the defeat she has announced her intentions to resign as party leader.

The New Moderates are the second largest party and under Reinfeldt the Right wing party have moved towards the centre ground. He is the first centre right PM to have won 2 terms since WWII

The left party are a socialist/feminist party. Ironically since adopting this feminist stance under Gudrun Schyman the party hasn’t had a female leader since 2003 when she stood down.

2010 Election Results





The Sverigedemokraterna (Swedish Democrats)problem.
This party is the Nationalist Party, thinking similar thoughts to the BNP, the country has too high an immigration intake threatening national identity and wants to return refugees to their home states etc. They don’t like the ‘special privileges’ the indigenous Sami people have, and wants to abolish the Sami Parliament. The party claim they are not hostile to homosexuals but they have a strong belief in the ‘nuclear family’ and oppose the rights for homosexuals to have children.

Why are they a problem?
(Apart from the reasons mentioned above!)

Well for the first time they have managed to win Parliamentary seats, 20 of them from a 5.7% vote, more than the left party. This meant that none of the two alliances could form a majority government and with the Alliance for Sweden holding power with a minority government the Swedish Democrats now hold the balance of power. Both alliances have said they will not work with the SDs. This then lead to protests including in Jönköping. Swedes say two things you don’t talk about in Sweden are Politics and Religion, so to see demonstrations of this kind is rare and holds a huge point.