Advertisement

Sweden's new immigrant party gets first elected position

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - news@thelocal.se
Sweden's new immigrant party gets first elected position
Sead Busuladzic will represent Sweden's new party Nyans on the city council in Landskrona. Photo: Ola Torkelsson/TT
Add The Local as a preferred source

Sweden's new immigrant party, Nyans, has won a council seat in the port city of Landskrona, the first elected position it has won since it was founded in 2019.

Ever since the September 11 election, it has been touch and go whether the party would make it over the two percent threshold to enter the council in the Landskrona, but after the vote count was finally complete on Wednesday morning, the party had gained its first council seat. 

"It feels super exciting to get the chance to affect and experience how political work takes place on the city council," the party's lead candidate Sead Busuladzic, told Sweden's public broadcaster SVT.

"You don't get that much influence with only one mandate, but we want to raise the importance of issues around integration and segregation, and around creating more meeting places where people's prejudices can be challenged. Too many people live in their own bubbles and don't meet one another."  

Advertisement

Landskrona was also the city where the far-right Sweden Democrats first broke through in a big way, back in 2006, winning 22 percent of the votes in the municipal election and gaining eight seats on the local council. 

Although Nyans (which translates as "nuance" in English) is open to people of all faiths and backgrounds on paper, it particularly seeks to appeal to and represent Muslim immigrants and has called for Muslims to be declared an official minority in the country. 

The party has faced criticism for running populist campaigns in the election, such as one accusing the social services departments in Swedish municipalities of forcibly taking Muslim children into care. It has also been criticised for campaigning in local elections on issues that can only be determined at a national level, or in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict, at an international one. 

Busuladzic said that he planned to focus on issues that affected Landskrona in particular. 

"We are going to follow national politics to a certain extent, but we are also going to publish a local programme where we raise issues that are important for Landskrona alone. I hope we can be a positive force so that we do not disappoint our voters." 

More

Comments

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at news@thelocal.se.
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also