Sweden: prime minister nomination fails
More than a month after the general election in Sweden, the bid of the Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson to be elected by the Swedish parliament as Prime Minister failed on Thursday. Given that the Swedish constitution imposes a limit of four proposed PM candidates, the national press speculates on whether it could come to a snap election.
Too many red lines
The Social Democrats have done too little to convince other parties to join the governing coalition, says columnist Hanne Kjöller in Svenska Dagbladet:
“Now we must all bear the consequences of the fact that the majority voted for parties which, throughout the election campaign, either drew red lines here and there or sat back and said that the government formation would sort itself out. ... I fully agree with Simona Mohamsson (of the Liberals) when she says that it is not her job to help Magdalena Andersson scrape together parties that can tolerate one another. ... As the saying goes, you reap what you sow.”
More pressure needed
Göteborgs-Posten hopes the parties will start to realise the gravity of the situation:
“As things stand now, we can only speculate about how the process of forming a government will turn out. What is clear is that the situation will probably only become more transparent once the threat of a general election becomes a real possibility in the third or fourth round of voting on who becomes prime minister. It is also clear that the Left Party will not be willing to play a subordinate role as it did eight years ago. This makes it all the more uncertain where the Centre Party will ultimately end up. The question is whether they even know this themselves at this stage.”