The Fall From Heaven

Been a while since I wrote about Swedish politics, or politics overall. That's mostly due to the only thing that seems to be in the media is Juholt, the Social Democratic leader. Cleared from the original charges of taking out money from a second apartment from the taxpayer since there was no rules around it (which anyone working at a job outside of politics would probably been charged with fraud or something like that, and everyone knows this). Then we had the double car expenditures. What that amounted to I don't know. We have policies from the party left and right and they are withdrawn a couple days later and then put forward again. The party don't want to take a budget debate because they have to stand next to SD with the government parties together on the other side. It's a circus. It doesn't help that people he stepped on to get to that position clearly backstab him over and over. A great example would be their former prospected finance minister Thomas Östros. In an interview some couple of weeks ago he got the question if he had faith in their leader. What was his answer? He had faith in the committee that appointed him. That is one of the more subtler backstabs I've ever seen. And media is on it like rabid dogs. All high-up social democratic representatives gets this question and I think only one or two said yes clearly without pointing toward the committee. How he survived the first week of the scandal I don't know.

Still, it has continued since nothing else seems to be able to overshadow this person. Last Friday it was time again when he was being interviewed by the norwegian Skavlan on his talk show. I didn't watch it because, well I've almost stopped caring about Juholt and it was a long time ago since I watched Skavlan. Still, things we're able to pop up. Apparently he's so competitive that he couldn't continue to play against his sons since they began beating him and he also keep a black book of sorts were he puts the names of his enemies. I don't know if that the best things to say when someone got it rough, he don't like losing and he will write down every injustice against him. People prefer if you go out as a recovering alcoholic or something like that, a flaw people can take pity and so on. Competitiveness and rancorous is not any of them. It doesn't help that he apparently was shot-down really hard by one of the other guest (a swedish-norwegian if anyone cares, Linn Ullmann). He travelled around Sweden asking for forgiveness for the mistakes he made, but maybe in a slip of the tongue he admitted he always thought he did the right thing, Ullmann countered with that when she ask for forgiveness she knows she did the wrong thing. Some have analyzed this and maybe it's just a communication miss between the two, but it doesn't make things better if people can misinterpret it like that. If anyone wants to read from both sides read these articles, one accusing everyone else for bullying Juholt and the other more or less acknowledging the "knock-out" Ullmann gave him. The comments are a bit more harsher, but probably more informative (at some points).

So what does all these things sum up? I came to the realization that Juholt appears more and more like a swedish version of Richard Nixon. The "I'm not a crook"-speech pretty much sums up everything Juholt would say about his apartment problem. The social democrats more on the right are the "deep throats" that supplies the media with all the information since he pushed them back and now he gives us his "enemies list in a black book". If Juholt by some twist of fate wins the next election (or has to resign as a party leader) I wouldn't be surprised if he did the V-sign.