Liberals slam Left Party for dictatorship aid

Liberal Party MP and foreign affairs spokesperson Fredrik Malm has accused the Left Party of funneling millions of kronor in development aid to leftist authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and causes around the world from 2005 to 2009.

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In an editorial in the Dagens Nyheter daily on Monday, Malm cited the Partido Comunista Colombiano, a non-reformed Marxist-Leninist party in Colombia, as well as Laban ng Masa, an alliance of revolutionary groups on the far left in the Philippines, as recipients of financing through the Left's international forum (Vänsterns internationella forum - VIF) and called on Lars Ohly to explain why the party supports dictatorships.

"Voters have the right to be informed about what happens to Swedish aid if the Left Party sits in a red-green government after the election," wrote Malm. "What a party does in opposition is of course what it is also prepared to do in a majority with much greater resources and political influence."

Each party has a parliamentary aid organisation that receives annual support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Styrelsen för Internationellt Utvecklingssamarbete, SIDA) for development cooperation. The total annual budget is 75 million kronor.

According to Malm, the Left Party is sponsoring a new political party formed by Laban ng Masa that supports an armed communist rebellion, PLM, with 640,000 kronor in 2009-2010.

Furthermore, at a conference in Manila in 2007 funded by VIF with Swedish tax revenue, seven leading Left Party members were on the guest list, as well as Cuba's ambassador to the Philippines and representatives from Hugo Chávez's regime in Venezuela.

Malm also accused the Left Party of "plowing" 150,000 kronor of Swedish tax money into the current dictatorship in Vietnam for nine months in 2007. In addition, the Left Party's international collaborations have a common thread: the Chávez regime in Venezuela.

VIF has planned Venezuelan lecture tours, sponsored think tank that have published writings on Chávez's revolution and paid for trips for Chávez supporters. In 2005, the party organised a conference in Caracas in which Ohly participated.