Swedish foreign minister resigns

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics mailing list,

The political near-consensus in Denmark over the cartoons crisis has broken down, with the left-wing opposition openly blaming the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, for aggravating the crisis for political ends. (The prime minister's party, the Liberals, has thrown the same accusations back. The Socialist People's Party's leader, for example, apparently described back in December the publication of the cartoons as "liberating".)

But the affair has just claimed its first political victim, albeit indirectly, and that victim is not Danish but Swedish. At a press conference an hour ago, Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds announced her resignation.

Why?

On February 10th this newsletter reported "the cartoons' appearance on a website run by the Sweden Democrats, the small far-right party." It went on: "Extraordinarily, the firm that hosts the Sweden Democrats' website removed the pictures yesterday evening...after being approached yesterday by both the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the security service." The newsletter also suggested that comments the previous day by the foreign minister "anticipated [sic] this action" (see the Scandinavian Politics group's website for these comments).

But, crucially, Freivalds subsequently denied - in terms that left only the tiniest room for semantic wriggling - that she'd known that her underling in the Foreign Ministry would contact the web host. Even more crucially, the prime minister, Göran Persson, condemned the civil servant's intervention (DN Feb 15th), which raised obvious freedom-of-speech issues. In fact, there were only fairly mild protests from a few newspapers and politicians. But they were enough to prompt an investigation by the chancellor of justice.

Yesterday morning the headline news on the radio was that the chancellor of justice had been informed by the Foreign Ministry that its official had, in fact, contacted the web host AFTER consulting the foreign minister. Now, my powers of political forecasting are not exactly renowned. But I felt immediately that Freivalds was done for. Opposition politicians demanded her sacking. Her desperate attempts to explain what she claimed was a misunderstanding never sounded persuasive. And having been so thoroughly criticised before Christmas by the tsunami investigation, she had no political capital left.

The political consequences are probably negative for the Social Democratic government. It adds to recent minor scandals - the party youth wing's leader getting involved in a drunken pub fight, revelations about libellous rumour-mongering by a party functionary, a massively generous pension plan awarded to the chief executive of the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly, who happens to be the prime minister's wife - that create the impression of a party that's grown too comfortable with government office. (British readers might note comparable developments in the Labour Party.)

On the other hand, Freivalds had become such a political liability during her two and a half years as foreign minister that, with over five months to go before the election, Social Democratic strategists might secretly be pleased to see the back of her.

Best,

Nick.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) | Department of Political Science, Umeå University | SE-901 87, Sweden | www.pol.umu.se

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