Historic political crisis in Sweden: Prime Minister resigns after losing vote of no confidence in Parliament

The Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, resigned on Monday, a week after being ousted by a vote of no confidence, and left it to the Speaker of Parliament to try to find a new head of government.

The Social Democratic leader, who had until Monday to announce his decision, ruled out the alternative possibility of calling early elections.

“One year from the scheduled elections, given the exceptional situation in which the country finds itself, with a pandemic and the challenges that this would entail, early elections are not the best for SwedenLofven said at a press conference.

“For this reason, I asked the Speaker of the House to be removed from my post as Prime Minister”, added.

Löfven considers the situation to be the same as in autumn 2018, after the last elections, when neither bloc got a majority and ended up signing a pact with centrists and liberals to isolate far-right Swedish Democrats (SD) and continue to govern in a minority, like the previous legislature.

The social democratic leader did not want to speculate on possible coalitions and he insisted that now the Speaker of Parliament, Andreas Norlén, begin the cycle of talks with political leaders to gauge their availability.

“We have a very difficult political and parliamentary situation”, said Löfven, whose party is the main parliamentary force, with 100 of the House’s 349 seats; monitoring of preservatives Ulf Kristersson, with 70, and the SD, with 62.

A historic motion

Löfven had become a week ago Sweden’s first incumbent head of government overthrown by no-confidence, made possible by the votes of Left Party, your external ally; the South Dakota, The preservatives and the Christian Democrats.

The left, apart from the government pact to which it gave the majority with its votes, warned in 2019 that it would withdraw its support if it fulfilled two points of the agreement with the centrists and the liberals: labor market and rent system reforms.

The cause of the motion was the project, a centrist demand, that the rents for new properties are no longer regulated and can be agreed upon based on market value.

During the week following the motion, the centrists withdrew the proposal and the left offered to support a new dealBut the refusal of these to make a pact with the ex-communists or with the SD and the decision of the liberals to return to the center-right made the whole situation.

The root of the problem lies in the vacuum that other forces have left in the SD since entering parliament in 2010, which has allowed Löfven to rule since 2014 when he lacked a majority.

Conservatives and Christian Democrats agree to govern in future for one year with the support of the SD, an option to which the Liberal Party is open, although among the four they do not have a majority.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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