Today in Sweden: A roundup of the latest news on Monday
Vote on Kristersson as PM, SD MP suspended for Anne Frank comment, rise in soup kitchen visits, Liberal youth party protest letter: find out what's going on in Sweden with The Local's roundup.
Swedish parliament to vote on Ulf Kristersson as PM at 11am
Sweden's parliament will hold a voting on Ulf Kristersson's candidate to be prime minister on Monday at 11am. Unless a majority of MPs actively vote against him (they almost certainly won't), he will address parliament at 9.30am tomorrow to set out the policy for his government in the year ahead, and present his new cabinet.
Then, at 1pm tomorrow he will meet King Carl XVI Gustaf for a so-called skifteskonselj. This is the moment he officially becomes prime minister.
Will Kristersson win the vote in parliament? The margins are pretty slim (176 seats to 173), so if only two rebelling MPs from his bloc vote against him, he loses. But it’s more likely that they’ll abstain than vote no – a way to quietly protest without actually going against the party line – and, in Sweden's system of negative parliamentarianism, abstentions are effectively yes votes.
Swedish vocab: att avvika – to abstain
Sweden Democrat MP suspended over Anne Frank 'horniness' comment
A Sweden Democrat official has been suspended by the far-right party for calling the Jewish teen diarist and holocaust victim Anne Frank "horniness itself" in an Instagram post.
Rebecka Fallenkvist, the 26-year-old presenter of the Sweden Democrats' Riks TV channel, who has just been voted in as an MP, posted on Instagram that 50 pages into the diary, she found Frank "debauched", and "horniness itself".
The Sweden Democrats' press chief Oskar Cavalli-Björkman told TT that the party was taking Fallenkvist's "insensitive and inappropriate" comments on social media "seriously", that the party was launching an internal process with their HR division, and that Fallenkvist would be "taken out of service" or suspended while that continues.
Fallenkvist caused scandal on election night by declaring "helg seger”, which means "weekend victory", but sounds very like the Nazi salute Hell seger (Sieg Heil) in an interview with the pro-SD news site Samnytt.
Swedish vocab: tagen ur tjänst – suspended
High food prices lead to spike in visits to soup kitchen
Stadsmissionen, the Swedish charity, has reported a sharp rise in the number of people coming to their centres to get a cheap meal, in its latest Poverty Report for 2022.
TT interviewed people visiting the branch in Södermalm Stockholm, where you can buy a meal for 20 kronor, and where 150 people eat every lunchtime.
"Everything's getting more expensive. Before, I could buy cheese, but I've had to stop," says Ulf Ljungström, 76, a pensioner. "It feels a little bit sad."
Swedish vocab: fattigdom – poverty
Liberal youth party calls on MPs to vote down Kristersson
Three representatives for the Liberal Party's youth organisation LUF on Friday published an open letter in the Expressen newspaper calling on MPs to vote down the Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson as Prime Minister.
"We campaigned for a more liberal Sweden. The Tidö Agreement is authoritarian in point after point. Now the Liberals must vote "no" to Kristersson and return to the negotiating table," they wrote.
"The Liberals have two alternatives ahead: either renegotiate the agreement, or the party leadership must admit that LUF and liberalism have been betrayed."
Swedish vocab: att svika – to betray/let down
Comments
See Also
Swedish parliament to vote on Ulf Kristersson as PM at 11am
Sweden's parliament will hold a voting on Ulf Kristersson's candidate to be prime minister on Monday at 11am. Unless a majority of MPs actively vote against him (they almost certainly won't), he will address parliament at 9.30am tomorrow to set out the policy for his government in the year ahead, and present his new cabinet.
Then, at 1pm tomorrow he will meet King Carl XVI Gustaf for a so-called skifteskonselj. This is the moment he officially becomes prime minister.
Will Kristersson win the vote in parliament? The margins are pretty slim (176 seats to 173), so if only two rebelling MPs from his bloc vote against him, he loses. But it’s more likely that they’ll abstain than vote no – a way to quietly protest without actually going against the party line – and, in Sweden's system of negative parliamentarianism, abstentions are effectively yes votes.
Swedish vocab: att avvika – to abstain
Sweden Democrat MP suspended over Anne Frank 'horniness' comment
A Sweden Democrat official has been suspended by the far-right party for calling the Jewish teen diarist and holocaust victim Anne Frank "horniness itself" in an Instagram post.
Rebecka Fallenkvist, the 26-year-old presenter of the Sweden Democrats' Riks TV channel, who has just been voted in as an MP, posted on Instagram that 50 pages into the diary, she found Frank "debauched", and "horniness itself".
The Sweden Democrats' press chief Oskar Cavalli-Björkman told TT that the party was taking Fallenkvist's "insensitive and inappropriate" comments on social media "seriously", that the party was launching an internal process with their HR division, and that Fallenkvist would be "taken out of service" or suspended while that continues.
Fallenkvist caused scandal on election night by declaring "helg seger”, which means "weekend victory", but sounds very like the Nazi salute Hell seger (Sieg Heil) in an interview with the pro-SD news site Samnytt.
Swedish vocab: tagen ur tjänst – suspended
High food prices lead to spike in visits to soup kitchen
Stadsmissionen, the Swedish charity, has reported a sharp rise in the number of people coming to their centres to get a cheap meal, in its latest Poverty Report for 2022.
TT interviewed people visiting the branch in Södermalm Stockholm, where you can buy a meal for 20 kronor, and where 150 people eat every lunchtime.
"Everything's getting more expensive. Before, I could buy cheese, but I've had to stop," says Ulf Ljungström, 76, a pensioner. "It feels a little bit sad."
Swedish vocab: fattigdom – poverty
Liberal youth party calls on MPs to vote down Kristersson
Three representatives for the Liberal Party's youth organisation LUF on Friday published an open letter in the Expressen newspaper calling on MPs to vote down the Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson as Prime Minister.
"We campaigned for a more liberal Sweden. The Tidö Agreement is authoritarian in point after point. Now the Liberals must vote "no" to Kristersson and return to the negotiating table," they wrote.
"The Liberals have two alternatives ahead: either renegotiate the agreement, or the party leadership must admit that LUF and liberalism have been betrayed."
Swedish vocab: att svika – to betray/let down
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 [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.
Please log in here to leave a comment.