FAR-RIGHT VOTE COMPLICATES COALITION BUILDING AFTER SWEDISH ELECTIONS
Mainstream may struggle to make majority without deal that involves party whose roots lie in neo-Nazi politics
Sweden woke up to a political deadlock yesterday after increased support for the far-right in a weekend general election that led to a hung parliament.
The centre-left bloc, which controls the current government, has 40.6 per cent of the vote and the centre-right has 40.2 per cent, meaning each bloc is on track to gain 143 to 144 seats but fall short of the 175 needed for a outright majority.
“There are no real winners,” Anders Sannerstedt, political analyst at Lunds University in Sweden, told The National.
While the two biggest parties – the Social Democrats and the Moderate Party – performed well at the polls, both fell short of a majority.
Social Democrats leader Stefan Lofven, whose party has come first in every election since 1917, said he planned to carry on as prime minister and run the government.
He will have to work with 28 per cent of the national vote, the party’s lowest percentage since 1908.
Mr Lofven’s proposal to form a coalition that crossed the ideological divide was cast into doubt after Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderates, demanded that Mr Lofven step down.
“Ulf Kristersson also wants to be prime minister and there is no maturity on either side,” Mr Sannerstedt said. He predicted that Sweden would be stuck in limbo for weeks.
Parliament will convene on September 24 to elect a speaker, who will then talk with party leaders and propose a prime minister. The speaker will then have three months and four attempts at reaching a parliamentary majority.
If this does not happen, snap elections may be held from December 24 onwards, but Mr Sannerstedt said this was not likely given Sweden’s political history.
“Extra elections are not very popular in Sweden. We have not had one since 1958 and that was under a different constitution,” Mr Sannerstedt said. “My guess is that parties will work very hard to avoid another election.”
Sweden has been ruled by minority governments for 52 of the past 60 years, Mr Sannerstedt said.
“The parties are quite used to handling minority situations and my guess is that the outcome will be one more minority government, the question is which one,” he said.
In this election matters are complicated by the rise of the far-right party, with whom no bloc wants to form a coalition. The Sweden Democrats improved to about 18 per cent from 13 per cent in 2014, but fell short of a 25 per cent.
Striking a deal with the Sweden Democrats, who campaigned on an anti-immigration and anti-EU platform, would give either bloc a majority.
But both of the big parties have ruled out working with a group that has its roots in the neo-Nazi movement.
Oke Bahnsen, of the European Centre for Social Research in Germany, said the Swedish results followed a pan-European trend in which traditional parties were weakened by the rise of the far-right.
“The times of traditional bloc politics in Sweden is over,” Mr Bahnsen said.
“We had two pre-electoral coalitions and both failed to get a majority.”
He said that one possible scenario could be a government led by the Moderate party and supported by the Sweden Democrats.
“But our data shows that this is a quite unpopular coalition,” Mr Bahnsen said.
He said a more likely outcome would be for some of the minor parties within the Alliance bloc led by the Moderate Party to join the left-wing red-green coalition between the Social Democrats and the Green Party, but “there have been no signals from the smaller parties so far”.
Some observers, however, dismissed the possibility that these centrist parties would jump to the left to keep Mr Lofven in power because they are politically farther removed from the Social Democrats than the Moderate Party.
At the European level, a new government in Sweden would mean a prime minister from the European People’s Party and only four socialists in the European Council.
But “it is difficult to make predictions at this stage”, Mr Bahnsen said.
“Co-operation between the Social Democrats and some of the parties in the Alliance would probably be the most desirable outcome for the EU [leadership],” where French and Germany face an anti-EU front led by Italy and Ukraine.
The country is used to minority governments and creating coalitions, but the presence of the Sweden Democrats may change the dynamics of building an administration