Swedish prime minister loses in no-confidence vote

Stefan Lofven (Stefan Lofven) became the first Swedish prime minister to lose in a vote of no confidence, throwing the Scandinavian country’s politics into turmoil as it continued to fight with a huge populist anti-immigrant Fight for the emergence of political parties.

Lowen, the leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party, lost 181 to 109 votes in the Swedish parliament. He said on Monday that he will decide within the next seven days whether to hold elections in advance. , Form a new government or resign.

The vote was triggered by the ex-communist left-wing party’s outrage over the proposal to remove rent controls for new apartments, leading them to cooperate with the right-wing opposition, including the populist Sweden Democrats.

Lofven told the Financial Times that this is a “new landscape” of the extreme left and the extreme right. He added that politicians must show voters that they can handle such a fragmented parliament with eight parties.

“With the pandemic and the economic crisis, we now need to show leadership. This is the best Sweden we are looking at,” he said.

For more than a decade, the Swedish political community has been struggling to cope with the rise of the Swedish Democratic Party. They entered the parliament for the first time in 2010 and ranked third with 17.5% in the last election in 2018. Their rising approval ratings have reversed the traditional left-right differences in Swedish politics.

Due to their neo-Nazi roots, the Swedish Democrats have long been excluded from the recent parliament because they seek to cooperate with the two main center-right opposition parties, the Moderate and the Christian Democrats.

The Swedish Democratic Party called for a vote of no confidence, believing that even if Sweden continues to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, it still has the opportunity to use left-wing dissatisfaction to gain a majority against Lowen in parliament.

“This government is not only harmful, it is also historically weak and cannot solve the problems that our citizens face every day,” the leader of the Swedish Democratic Party, Jimmy Axon, told Parliament on Monday.

The Social Democratic Party called the Left and the Swedish Democratic Party’s joint opposition to Lowen “an evil coalition.”

Political scientists say that Sweden’s politics has become so fragmented that, in the current parliament and opinion polls, if there are early elections, it is difficult to form a coherent government.

Lofven still has the opportunity to move on, whether as the head of the caretaker government or by adjusting his minority party coalition, which includes the Green Party, and has so far received support from the center and the left in Parliament.

Ulf Kristersson, the moderate leader of the main center-right opposition party, said that excluding the Swedish Democratic Party from political discussions — as the Social Democratic Party continues to do — will lead to “polarization and mistrust.” “.

If elections are held in advance, the center-right is likely to start a campaign for immigration, integration, and violent crime rates, which Christerson called the “second epidemic” to the Financial Times last year.