With Liberals on board, formation of new Swedish government lies in hands of Left
TT/The Local - [email protected]
Published: 13 Jan, 2019 CET.
Updated: Sun 13 Jan 2019 18:06 CET
The Liberal Party on Sunday evening voted in favour of adopting a four-party deal that would end months of political deadlock in Sweden.
The party’s board voted 62-30 to support an agreement it struck on Friday with the Centre Party, the Green Party and the Social Democrats that would allow Stefan Löfven to stay on as prime minister.
The Liberals’ vote came just hours after the Green Party similarly cleared the way for the deal.
The Liberals, like Centre, will not actually vote for Löfven as prime minister but will abstain from voting against him. This form of offering “passive support” is part of Sweden's system of negative parliamentarianism, in which a proposed government does not technically need a single vote in its favour to pass. All that is required is that a majority does not vote against it.
Now the fate of Löfven and the Social Democrats’ return to power appears to rest in the hands of the Left Party. Even with the votes from the Social Democrats and Green Party, and the Centre and Liberal's abstentions, the suggested government would need Left Party support in order to pass a parliamentary vote.
That support may be hard to come by, given the four-party agreement explicitly states that the Left Party “will not have influence over the political direction in Sweden during the coming term".
The Left Party has not yet publicly stated its position to the proposal but news agency TT was reporting on Sunday that the party viewed the concessions to the centre-right Liberals and Centre as too great and are threatening to torpedo the whole deal.
“The Left Party faces a choice. They must either accept an over-the-middle government or they will instead ensure that Sweden gets a right government with SD [the Sweden Democrats, ed.] in the backseat,” Liberal leader Jan Björklund said on Sunday.
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The party’s board voted 62-30 to support an agreement it struck on Friday with the Centre Party, the Green Party and the Social Democrats that would allow Stefan Löfven to stay on as prime minister.
The Liberals’ vote came just hours after the Green Party similarly cleared the way for the deal.
The Liberals, like Centre, will not actually vote for Löfven as prime minister but will abstain from voting against him. This form of offering “passive support” is part of Sweden's system of negative parliamentarianism, in which a proposed government does not technically need a single vote in its favour to pass. All that is required is that a majority does not vote against it.
Now the fate of Löfven and the Social Democrats’ return to power appears to rest in the hands of the Left Party. Even with the votes from the Social Democrats and Green Party, and the Centre and Liberal's abstentions, the suggested government would need Left Party support in order to pass a parliamentary vote.
That support may be hard to come by, given the four-party agreement explicitly states that the Left Party “will not have influence over the political direction in Sweden during the coming term".
The Left Party has not yet publicly stated its position to the proposal but news agency TT was reporting on Sunday that the party viewed the concessions to the centre-right Liberals and Centre as too great and are threatening to torpedo the whole deal.
“The Left Party faces a choice. They must either accept an over-the-middle government or they will instead ensure that Sweden gets a right government with SD [the Sweden Democrats, ed.] in the backseat,” Liberal leader Jan Björklund said on Sunday.
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