The motion was defeated by one vote on Wednesday, despite the opposition managing to convince two former Sweden Democrat MPs to vote in their favour.
After the defeat, Green MP Annika Hirvonen, who was one of the driving forces behind the motion, accused the Sweden Democrats of breaking long-established parliamentary protocol on 'pairing off' to win the vote.
"They sent in two people to manipulate the outcome," she told The Local. "This has never happened before... it doesn't look like anything else than conscious manipulation of the result."
She said that the Sweden Democrats' unprecedented breaking of the pairing agreement would have to have "consequences".
"We will need to discuss how we are going to proceed, because after this kind of breach of trust, we can't continue as if nothing has happened. A reasonable thing to do, of course, would be to take the initiative to put this issue to a new vote."
Hirvonen said the two MPs who were supposed to have been absent were Charlotte Quensel and Michael Rubbestad. According to the voting lists, the pair were absent for the main vote on the citizenship bill but present for the vote on transitional rules, which took place just a few seconds later.
Sweden's parties have a long-standing pairing system, called kvittning, where parties agree to hold back MPs from voting to balance out MPs from the opposing side who are sick or who have other engagements. The Sweden Democrats were barred from participating in the arrangement for their first ten years in the parliament, as they were not seen as a mature party. They were only allowed to participate in 2021.
When contacted by The Local, the Sweden Democrats acknowledged that they had sent two MPs who were on the agreed list of non-voting MPs to vote against the opposition motion, ensuring its defeat.
Linda Lindberg, the party's group leader, said that the move had been necessary to prevent "drama-seeking independent MPs" from upsetting the system.
"The people have voted for the Tidö majority and as a result as voters, you should also be able to expect that our policies become reality, regardless of whether there are a couple of power-seeking independents taking our seats in the chamber," she said. "Important legislation must be allowed to take precedence over the influence of independents and the system of pairing off, which is why I ensured that this particular individual vote was voted through."
Hirvonen said she hoped now to talk to the group leaders of the other parliamentary parties to see if the vote could be held again, meaning there is still a small chance of transitional arrangements being added to the bill.
"I will talk to the other parties' group leaders. We made this agreement together, all of us," she said. The Sweden Democrats' failure to respect it, she added, showed that they were not a normal, mature party.
"They are not. If a handshake where you agree on something cannot be trusted, then what can be trusted with them?"
Elsa Widding, one of the two former Sweden Democrat MPs who had decided to vote for the transitional arrangements, said that what the Sweden Democrats had done amounted to cheating.
"They kind of cheated the system to get this through, otherwise the opposition would have won and there would have been transitional rules," she told The Local. "Instead, it’s going to be complete chaos."
The Moderate Party, which relies on Sweden Democrat support to be in government, refused to comment on the Sweden Democrats' break with protocol.
"I can only speak for the Moderate Party's parliamentary group and we stick to the agreement on pairing off we have with the Social Democrats," Mattias Karlsson, the party's group leader, told The Local. "Other parties speak for themselves about what they choose to do. I believe all of us group leaders need to meet to discuss the pairing system."
Given that the Säpo security police had called for transitional rules to be avoided, he added, the Social Democrats also had questions to answer.
"The Social Democrats were prepared to put Sweden’s security to one side and form a majority together with Left Party, Green Party, Centre Party and two independents in order to pursue a more relaxed migration policy. That is something one should also have opinions about."
When the Local asked Hirvonen how she felt about the Sweden Democrats' reneging on decades of parliamentary tradition, she said her feelings did not matter as she was not one of those directly affected.
"It's not about me. It's about all the people, these almost 102,000 people, who have been waiting for a long time and who are now going to be thrust into insecurity by even longer waiting times. They [the queues] will explode, of course, because no one has prepared for these procedures, for these tests, no one knows when they are even coming or how they will look, so I feel sorry for all these people."
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