The House That Money Bildt

The hits just keep on coming for the new Swedish government. Two ministers have already been forced to resign, and a third one might join the fray soon. Former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (of the Swedish right-wing Moderate Party) has gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble. After leaving the Prime Minister's office in 1994, Bildt was rather active in foreign policy, particularly in the Balkans, where he served as a conflict mediator and as co-chairman of the Dayton Peace conference. In addition to that, he also did quite a bit of work in the private sector, serving on several company boards. It's one of those boards that's causing Bildt a world of hurt.

Bildt was on the board of directors for a Swedish investment company called Vostok Nafta, primarily focused on investments in oil and gas in the former Soviet Union. About 90% of those investments are in the Russian gas giant Gazprom. Upon resigning from the board last October to become foreign minister, Bildt cashed in some 500,000 euros in stock options he received in salary as a board member. Chump change in the grand scheme of things, but it causes several problems for Bildt. First of all, he wasn't entitled to keeping the stock options at all upon his (voluntary) resignation, but had to request a special decision from the board to allow him to keep them. If you're a member of the "new workers party," as the Moderates campaigned on last year, that won't fly (nevermind that he would truly be deserving that much cash for attending a grand total of four board meetings!). Secondly, there's a potential conflict of interest as Gazprom wants to build a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which at some point has to be contemplated by the Swedish government. 500,000 euros cashed in by the Foreign Minister of said government are thus looking rather suspicious in that light.

In predictable upper class twit form, Bildt himself has reacted as if he's being the victim of left-wing media witch hunt, claiming to be entitled to that money and that anyone suggesting otherwise is guilty of "partisan politics." Not only that, but he seems to be under the impression that by accepting the (rather well paid) position of Foreign Minister, he has made an enormous sacrifice almost messianic in proportions. It's certainly understandable that being a Minister in a government requires a certain arrogance and belief in one's ability to do the job, but Bildt really takes the cake.
Prosecutors are looking into the legality of Bildt's actions. Maybe they're perfectly legal, maybe they're not. Politics is all about perception, though, and the perceptionon on the western shores of the Baltic Sea is that Bildt is yet another corrupt minister in a government that campaigned on being exactly the opposite. I used to have a lot respect for Bildt, if not for his domestic policy, at least for his work in foreign policy. After this latest scandal, however, it's hard not to look at his foreign policy achievements and wonder how much of his actions were influenced by his private sector commitments.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt took quite a gamble when he decided to appoint Carl Bildt to the position of Foreign Minister. Looks like Reinfeldt rolled snake eyes. Regardless of the legality of the actions of the Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt ought to resign.

New Swedish Government Stumbles Out Of The Gate

The new centre-right Swedish government is off to a good start. Five days old, and already two scandals, one of which threatens to force one of the new ministers to resign.

The new Swedish Minister for Foreign Trade, Moderate Maria Borelius, has apparently illegally hired a nanny, and failed to pay taxes for it. Her excuse? She couldn't afford it. Which would perhaps be believable, if it weren't for the fact that she's a millionaire. With the Moderate Party campaigning as the "new worker's party," perhaps the millionaire's club would do well not to piss on their voters. Just a suggestion.

The other scandal is that two other ministers, Minister of Culture Cecilia Stegö Chilò and Minister for Migration Thomas Billström, have both neglected to pay TV license fees for 16 and 10 years, respectively. One may question the merits of having TV licenses and public service television at all, certainly, but perhaps ministers in the cabinet ought to follow the laws, or at least have the good taste of following the laws until they've had them repealed. As far as civil disobedience goes, this is not exactly refusing to sit in the back of the bus, this is just a matter of a few rich persons who'd rather spend their money on redecorating the interior of their yachts.

Add to that the surprise appointment of former Moderate Prime Minister Carl Bildt as Foreign Minister. Within minutes of the press conference starting, Bildt, who is an old-school Moderate, as compared to the more centrist new Moderates like Reinfeldt, started criticising the new government's domestic policy platform and suggested immediate tax cuts. Bildt will be excellent on foreign affairs, I have no doubt, but it remains to be seen whether he and Reinfeldt will be able to get along.

So, all in all, not a very good first week for Reinfeldt. On the plus side, he has about four years to convince the Swedish people his cabinet is not made up exclusively of upper-class twits. If he can't, he'll end up back in the opposition.

Which isn't to say that the centre-left Social Democrats haven't had their fair share of corruption. But that's one of the reasons they lost this time around. You can't campaign against it, only to be exposed for being exactly the same a freakin' week later!

Swedish Elections: Postmortem

Last post on the Swedish parliamentary elections, promise!

So Reinfeldt's gambit paid off. The "new", more left-wing Moderate Party had its best elections, ever, while the Social Democrats had their worst elections, ever. The right-wing bloc won a narrow seven seat majority in the Swedish parliament. SDP leader Göran Persson will, quite understandably, step down as prime minister and party leader.
It remains to be seen what a coalition government led by Reinfeldt can accomplish. Having stepped to the left in the campaign, the Swedish center-right parties will have to sacrifice large portions of their agenda. Which won't make their normal constituencies particularly happy. Personally I quite like Fredrik Reinfeldt, although I have my reservations about some of his coalition partners. The Liberal People's Party in particular, who've campaigned on quasiracist themes such as mandatory language tests (and, while the right-wing bloc overall was successful, the LPP suffered heavy losses). Hopefully only campaign posturing.
Thankfully, the truly racist Sweden Democratic party was nowhere close to gaining seats in parliament; unfortunately they were a lot closer than four years ago.

Swedish Elections: Election Day

My blogging will be utterly sporadic for a while more, as I have a ridiculous amount of stuff to do.

So today's the day. Sweden will be holding their elections. The latest polls seem to suggest the right-wing bloc have a commanding lead, and if those numbers hold, Fredrik Reinfeldt, party leader of the Moderate Party (the largest right-wing party in Sweden), is the probable new prime minister of Sweden. It will follow one of the dirtiest election campaigns in Swedish history (from both sides), and, in the bizarroland that is Sweden, Reinfeldt will have accomplished this by moving his party significantly to the left. In other countries, it's usually the left having to move to the right to win (see Clinton and the Democrats, Blair and Labour). Somewhat paradoxally, one of the MP's alliance parties, the Liberal People's Party, have made a lot of noise about restricting immigration during the same campaign. This all will make for an interesting four years, as a right-wing Swedish government will have to feature at least four parties (see my previous post on the elections) with somewhat different agendas. The SDP, should they end up in opposition, will be sure to use that to their advantage; I don't expect them to be down for long.

Swedish Elections: Ugly, Ugly, Ugly

Never have so many people flung so much dirt in so little time. Well, if you don't count every other election held, like, ever.
But this year's Swedish parliamentary elections seem dirtier than previous Swedish elections, at the very least in recent times.

The dominating party in Sweden is the Social Democrats (SDP), who have been in government almost continuously since 1940 (they were in opposition only between 1991 - 1994 and 1976 - 1982). In recent years, the party have formed a minority one-party government, while being backed up by the Left Party and the Greens in parliament to form a voting majority.
The Swedish government's tepid response to the tsunami disaster in late 2004, when about 550 Swedes died, caused major outrage^[1] and drew heavy criticisms from just about everyone; the investigations into the failings of the government on this issue are on-going as we speak...write. Several key officials in the government had to resign over it, including foreign minister Laila Freivalds and head of the Office of the Prime Minister Lars Danielsson (as recently as last week, with only a few weeks to go 'til the elections).

The Left party have concerns of their own, as they lost their charismatic party leader Gudrun Schyman, who, while controversial, also proved to be a voter magnet. And thenGreens are always balancing on the edge of the 4% threshold^[2]. Some polls suggest the Left Party may fall under that 4% threshold as well. The Swedish left is in a bit of a bind, in other words.
The right-wing bloc, consisting of the Moderate Party, the Liberal People's Party, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats, is thus eager to finally get back into government. If they ever had a chance of doing so, this year would be it. Although, the Christian Democrats are also precariously near that 4% threshold in recent polls, as they too lost a charismatic leader in Alf Svensson.
Polls so far suggest the two blocs are dead even, with the right-wing bloc occasionally ahead, and it seems this will be a race to the bitter end.
Oh, and as always there's a plethora of small parties, vying to get enough votes for seats in parliament. Right-wing extremists, BitTorrent leechers, former reality show stars, you name it. They all have a party.
The stage is set, time to get dirty!

First it turned out an SDP operative had been sending anonymous e-mails, ridiculing and making libellous comments about MP leader Fredrik Reinfeldt.
Then there was the spying scandal, where a member of the Christian Democrats attempted to infiltrate the SDP by posing as an activist (although doing so badly enough to get caught).
And now an operative with the Liberal Party has allegedly hacked into SDP computers, getting hold of data on, among other things, SDP election strategies, travel itineraries for the Prime Minister and security details of several government officials. The hackings have taken place over the span of a year. The scandal broke just this week, and Swedish papers are already drawing comparisons to Watergate.
What effect, if any, will this have on the outcome of the elections? I haven't a clue. Between now and September 17, all bets are off. Anything can happen. For all I know, given this apparent win-at-all-costs strategy everyone seems to be employing, the losing side may attempt a coup d'état on September 18.

Aah, Democracy. It truly brings out the best in us, doesn't it?

^[1] To be fair, some of that outrage being politically motivated, though most of it being quite genuine.
^[2] A party needs at least 4% of the nationwide popular vote (or 12% in one of the 29 electoral districts) to gain seats in the Swedish parliament; this is to avoid a multitude of small parties with only one or two seats that would make it difficult to form a government. Thus if your party wins more than 4% of the vote, you're apportioned a certain number of seats on the basis of your popular vote. If your party wins 3.9%, you get no seats at all.