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Swedish Moderate opposition leader urges PM & his center-left government to resign ‘Nothing is decided’: Sweden’s socialist PM clings on, as opposition smells blood after election tie
(about 2 hours later)
Swedish Moderates’ leader, Ulf Kristersson, whose opposition center-right bloc virtually tied with the ruling center-left coalition has urged PM Stefan Lofven and his government to resign. Incumbent Stefan Lofven vowed to stay in his post, after the center-right leader demanded his resignation, and surging Sweden Democrats boasted they will play kingmaker as all sides prepared themselves for a post-election deadlock
"This government has run its course… Now it should resign,” Kristersson told a party rally, after preliminary election results showed his opposition coalition in a tie with its centre-left rivals. “Nothing will be determined tonight,” Lofven, the Social Democrat leader, said in a speech as election results projected that both the center-right and the center-left coalition would both attain the same number of seats in parliament, and fall well short of a simple majority.
Kristersson, who is the center-right Alliance’s candidate for prime minister, said that the election results have shown their rivals are “unlikely” to find enough support in parliament, and that he will hold discussion with partners on how to form a new Swedish government. Promising to “calmly continue working” until a government is formed, and calling Sunday’s vote “the funeral of bloc politics” the one-term prime minister appeared to tout a possible grand coalition with the center-right, which would have no precedent in the country’s politics.
Earlier, the leader of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Akesson, indicated he was ready for potential coalition talks, but challenged Kristersson to choose between seeking support from his party and PM’s Social Democrats. Its aim – the “moral duty” to exclude the anti-migrant Sweden Democrats from power.
"We increase our seats in parliament and we see that we will gain huge influence over what happens in Sweden during the coming weeks, months and years," Akesson told a party rally, adding that he was ready for cooperation will all parties, especially the center-right. "The Sweden Democrats can never, and will never, offer anything that will help society. They will only increase division and hate," said Lofven, who had repeatedly depicted his opponents as “Nazis” and “racist” through the course of the campaign.
READ MORE: Will Sweden Democrats demolish Europe's model 'humanitarian superpower' tonight? But the long-established center-right Moderate party did not appear to be immediately receptive to the overtures of a leader who had led his party to their worst result since 1908.
However, both of the main parties have previously said that they will not form a coalition with Akesson's faction, meaning that a minority government, grand coalition or prolonged political crisis are all on the table. “This government has run its course,” the Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson told cheering supporters at a post-election rally. “Now it should resign.”
The leader of Sweden's Liberal Party, Jan Bjorklund, reiterated his rejection of any cooperation with SD. “I want an Alliance government, but it will not happen in cooperation with the Sweden Democrats," Bjorklund said Sunday. Yet Kristersson also publicly rejected to possibility of teaming up with the Sweden Democrats, which also narrows his bloc’s path to forming a majority government.
DETAILS TO FOLLOW Having led them a historic watermark, the Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson said he would be “receptive” to negotiating with the Moderates, and suggested that in the wake of the result, all paths to forming a government will go through his party.
"We increased our seats in parliament and we see that we will gain huge influence over what happens in Sweden during the coming weeks, months and years," Akesson said in his speech, after calling the Sweden Democrats the true victors of the election.
“No one can take this away from us,” said Akesson, who has led his party from 2005, a time in which it has gone from 1.4 to 17.7 percent of the vote.
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