The speaker of the Swedish parliament on October 2 asked the leader of the conservative Moderates party to try to form a government. The September 9 elections, held after four years of centre-left rule, led to neither main political bloc winning a majority, making it difficult to build a stable coalition.
“I’ve decided to give Ulf Kristersson the mandate to try and form a government that is tolerated by the parliament,” Andreas Norlen told a news conference in Stockholm.
“He will have to report this mission to me in two weeks, with a milestone in a week,” Norlen added.
As reported by the Agence France-Presse (AFP), outgoing prime minister Stefan Lofven‘s Social Democrats remained the nation’s largest party and its red-green coalition won one more seat than the centre-right bloc.
But Lofven was ousted by parliament last week in a vote of no confidence by the centre-right bloc and the far-right Sweden Democrats.
The vote leaves Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson in the driving seat of negotiations as he tries to get his party, the second largest in parliament and a member of the centre-right four party Alliance, into government.
“I’m a speaker of the parliament, not a magician,” Norlen warned, ahead of Kristersson’s daunting task.
According to AFP, Kristersson had initially ruled out appealing for far-right support despite mounting pressure from within the Moderates.
“If everyone remains stuck in their occupied positions then we’ll never have a government,” he said. “I will first speak with the Alliance but also with the Social Democrats and Stefan Lofven.”
