by fjallstrom
Wed Oct 31st, 2018 at 12:10:38 AM EST
When last we left of, the election night, things ended inconclusive. And not much has changed.
To recap, the left bloc got 144 seats and declared themselves winners. But so did the right bloc with 143, on account of the left bloc losing more. And of course the far right Sweden Democrats with 62 seats also declared themselves winners.
Front paged - Frank Schnittger
Since then, prime minister Löfven has been voted out, but remains until a new PM has been appointed.
Parliament elected a speaker from the Moderate party with the votes of the right and far right, but then elected a Social Democrat, a Centre Party MP and a Left party MP as vice presidents of the parliament, snubbing the far right of any seat.
The Speaker first gave the Moderate party leader the mission to form a government. He failed, as the Liberals and Centre refuses to rule dependent on support from the far right, and the Social Democrats refused to support a right bloc government. But he didn't bring it to the parliament so no (out of four), attempts has officially been tried yet.
Then PM Löfven got a new try. He failed as the Liberals and Centre refuses to join his government. He also didn't bring it to parliament, so still no votes (out of four).
Now the Speaker has declined to give a new party leader a go. Instead he has called the party leaders of the right bloc and the current government to a series of meetings to find out what they want. Everyone is still tight lipped about the actual progress, but if I were speaker, I would find out what the Liberals and Centre wants, because they are the key.
My gut feeling is that the Liberals and Centre are playing it out in order to get less of a backlash when they split the right bloc and joins the current government (with or without the Greens). But we could get a new election, and since we haven't had one of those for almost a hundred years, nobody knows how the voters will react.
So, eventually we will see. In the meantime, the Moderates and the Social Democrats has divided up chairmanships in the parliament committees (normally, the government parties get those), reflecting that they don't know where this will land. And the finance minister has called the finance spoke-persons from the right bloc to do some form of consensus budget (otherwise the last one rolls over, with indexed increases).
