Sweden - Politics
Ordinary general elections to the Swedish Parliament are held every fourth year on the third Sunday in September. County council and municipal council elections take place at the same time. A barrier rule exists to prevent very small parties from gaining representation in the Parliament. A party must thus receive at least 4% of the votes in the entire country or 12% in a single electoral district to qualify for any seats.
Two dramatic murders have shaken Sweden’s normally calm society in recent years. In 1986, Prime Minister, Olof Palme, was shot in central Stockholm by an unknown gunman. Sweden was plunged into shock, which resurfaced in 2003 when Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed while shopping in a Stockholm department store. Six months later a 25-year old Swede of Serbian origin, who had acted on impulse, was convicted of her murder. Neither Palme or Lindh had body guards with them at the time of the attacks. Security around top politicians has since been tightened but Sweden is still a very open country and the public has easy access to politicians.
Sweden has traditionally taken a generous approach to asylum seekers, which has helped to contribute to a growing immigrant population. The main source of post war immigration was Greece and Italy. Refugees from the former Yugoslavia followed in the 1990s, followed again by Kurds (Iraqis), Iranians and Somalis. Many immigrants live in large suburbs outside Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö and their existence can go unnoticed by the casual visitor. Unemployment is high among the more recent immigrants, many of whom struggle to learn Swedish and can feel excluded from mainstream society.
After the 1991 parliamentary elections, the Moderates, Liberals, Center, and Christian Democrats made up a non-socialist minority government, with 170 seats. The EU dominated the 1990s. The Social Democratic government applied for membership in 1991 and the successor Conservative Government reaffirmed Sweden's commitment to the aims of the EU, including its provisions for a Common Foreign and Security Policy. This was significant in light of Sweden's longstanding unilateral commitment to neutrality. The decline in East – West tension had prompted a debate in Sweden as to what 'neutrality' now meant in practise. The resulting consensus was that Sweden's neutrality was compatible with the EU's goal of a Common Foreign and Security Policy. In 1995 Sweden became the 15th member of the EU. In a 2003 referendum, Swedes rejected adopting the Euro.
In the 1994 elections, three of the four parties in the ruling minority coalition government lost seats, and the government resigned. The Social Democrats regained power in 1994, with a minority government of 161 seats. In 1996 Social Democrat Göran Persson became Prime Minister after his party colleague Ingvar Carlsson stepped down.
Persson then won elections in 1998 and 2002, both times forming a minority government, supported in the Riksdag by the Left Party and the Greens. In the 1998 election, the Social Democrats received 36.4% of the vote, down from 45.3% in 1994. The Social Democrats have cooperated informally with the Left Party and the Greens, relying on them for parliamentary majority and cooperating on social and budgetary issues. Based on the 1998 election results, seven parties were represented in the Parliament: the Social Democratic Party (36.4%; 131 seats), the Moderate Party (22.9%; 82 seats), the Left Party (12.0%; 43 seats), the Christian Democratic Party (11.8%; 42 seats), the Center Party (5.1%; 18 seats), the Liberal Party (4.7%; 17 seats) and the Green Party (4.5%; 16 seats).
Swedish voters gave the ruling Social Democrats a third term in September 2002, countering a rightward shift in Europe and boosting chances that Sweden will soon join the common European currency, the euro. Sweden's currency, the crown, had already shown its approval of the election results. The Social Democrats took 40 percent the vote, four percent more than they received in the last election four years ago. The party has been in power since 1994, and had ruled Sweden for all but nine of the past 70 years. Together with the Left and the Greens, they look set to control 191 seats in the 349-seat Swedish parliament. Prime Minister Persson campaigned this time on a promise to protect Sweden's cherished welfare state.
But while Sweden's Social Democrats did well, the big surprise was the showing of the Liberal Party, which nearly tripled its support of four years ago, surging past two other parties to become the third largest faction in parliament. The Liberals built their campaign around proposals to tighten immigration rules, including a requirement that immigrants pass a Swedish language test before being granted citizenship.
Political parties are eligible to receive public funding depending on past election results. There are no restrictions on the source, form or amount of private donations. Similarly, no restrictions apply to parties’ campaign expenditures. Political parties are not legally required to publish their accounts, although a joint agreement among the parliamentary parties has resulted in all of these parties doing so. Not all individual contributions, however, are itemized. Some political parties expressed their criticism of the Swedish system of party/campaign finance and reporting. They argued that greater transparency is required, especially regarding the disclosure of individual donations.
The media environment is open and pluralistic with a wide range of public and private media outlets. The coverage of election campaigns by media outlets is largely unregulated although the public broadcaster is bound to respect general principles of accuracy, impartiality and privacy. Paid political campaign advertising on commercial TV channels will be allowed in general elections for the first time.
Olof Palme, Sweden’s best-known international politician, was prime minister of Sweden (1969–76, 1982–86), prominent leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetar Partiet). Palme was gunned down on 28 February 1986 in Stockholm). On 10 June 2020 the long-running Palme murder investigation ended, as chief prosecutor Krister Petersson revealed who he thinks held the gun: Stig Engström, an advertising consultant for insurance company Skandia, who disliked Palme and had access to weapons, but had never previously featured among the prominent suspects.
For 34 years, the unsolved murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme has been nothing short of an open wound in Sweden, and it has given rise to numerous conspiracy theories over the years. The New York Times reported in 1996, former police hit squad commander Eugene de Kock once testified in court that the Palme killing was part of “Operation Long Reach,” the secret campaign to counter the apartheid administration’s foes abroad.
Christer Pettersson, a man who had previously served jail time for manslaughter, was convicted of the crime in July 1989 and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the conviction was overturned in an appeals court that October on the grounds that no murder weapon or motive had been discovered. More than 130 people had confessed to killing Palme, in a syndrome nicknamed Palmessjukdom: “Palme sickness.” More than 600 million kronor is estimated to have been spent on the case. It's been the biggest news story for 34 years, and it ended with a whimper.
Stig Engström, also known as "the Skandia man", was questioned as a witness back in the 80s and was interviewed in the media several times. But when his witness statements did not add up, he was fairly rapidly dismissed as an unreliable attention-seeker who was simply trying to overstate his own importance. Petersson took his time to go through a long list of evidence: that Engström's clothes matched descriptions of the killer, that no other witness on the scene was able to back up Engström's own claims of his contributions or even remember him, and that many of Engström's own movements that night matched those of the killer.
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