Tuesday, September 12, 2006

DIRTY POLITICS IN SWEDEN

The Swedish election for the Parliament will take place on Sunday, September 17. The political campaigns have heated up with some scandals popping up at the "right" moment...

But first, take a moment and read my post, ELECTION ON SEPTEMBER 17 IN SWEDEN, for some background information on the Swedish general election, 2006. After I had posted the mentioned post, Gerard Van der Leun, Editor-In-Chief, Pajamas Media, asked some questions regarding the political climate in Sweden, trends in Europe, fringe parties, e.g. the Pirate Party and the Greens, etc. I answered as follows:

I wouldn't say that Sweden is a leading force in political trends. Sweden has been an isolated landscape for a long period of time, with about 50 years of socialist governance. The opposition has been in power only for 8 years in the 80's and that didn't turn out well, so the Social Democrats took back the leading role again. This time around, the opposition is leading with about 5% and is more of an alliance than separate parties.

Social Democrats - The leading party with about 30 - 40%.

Left (former communist) around 10% before, now only 5%.

Green party. Environmentalists. Around 5%.

Moderate party. Conservative without the religious talk. The biggest opposition party. Around 25%.

Liberal party. Social liberals.

Center party (former farmer party).

Christian Democrats.

And then you have smaller parties that wants to jump into the fight...

It is a fringe group according my view, and they are dangerous. Look at them as anarchists. Green party is a bunch of strange characters and they have got lots of attention, relative to their small size of supporters. Green party has its roots in Germany and is now an international organization. Same thing could happen with the Pirate party, starting up activities in other countries, e.g. USA.



So, are you ready for some dirty politics? First out is when Lars Danielsson, Prime Minister Göran Persson's closest party man, cut sacked due to his incompetence in handling the consequences of the tsunami disaster. Next scandal has to do with members of the Liberal Party entered the Social Democratic Party's computer network. Here is an excerpt from the article, Liberals 'wanted journalist to dig the dirt'.

The Liberal Party wanted the media to chase scandals about the Social Democrats, and handed a journalist login details to the governing party's computer network. That is what former press secretary Per Jodenius told police during questioning. (TheLocal.se, 09/12/06.)



Not really a scandal, but could it be a coincidence that Al Gore is stopping by Stockholm and pushing for his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, at this moment in time? Could it be that he wants to highlight the environmental issues during the last period before the election?

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