Shadows of Doubt

Well, might be time for a sporadic post to commemorate over 10 000 views on the blog. If they are all one of the same person reading I don't know. So what should we discuss today? Well, we can write about the latest meltdown of Swedish politics that went down last week. The last couple of months the four oppositions parties had made a full-scale frontal assault and banded together to stop the raising of the state income tax (I've learned afterwards it was something down annually to counter inflation and all that although it was a bit higher than usual). These four parties were the left party, the social democratic party, the green party and the Sweden democrats. To achieve this, since they haven't planned on putting forward a single budget, was to break out this bit from the governmental budget and get a vote on it. This is seen by many as a break against the compromise that a budget must be voted as a whole as to avoid political chaos when it is a minority government and no one can muster a majority for an alternative. The opposition try to justify it with that it is allowed in order to ensure the finances of the state (which open a real can of worms since what is seen as the best for the state differs greatly and could lead to a social democratic minority government see their budget picked apart, and then we are not even disusing the implications for the red-green parties as they made a deal with the Sweden democrats)

This is the back-ground, the vote was last week and everyone expected the opposition to win since they have a majority. THEY LOST WITH ONE VOTE! The vote was cast and the result was 154 with the government and 153 with the opposition. How was this possible? First of the Sweden democrats had one member in New York for a political meeting and since they aren't involved the weighing principle he couldn't be done with. But the opposition still would have had a two vote majority. The second problem was that the party leader of the left was in the south of Sweden debating the school minister and a communication miss between the left party and the weighing committee failed to take one person away from the government side. They opposition still would have had one vote majority. Thirdly, two politicians from the social democratic party was in the area, but in the wrong building and missed the vote. Not anyone either, the party's stand in for their party leader who isn't voted into parliament and one of the veterans. After 1-2 months of boosting speeches they fail to deliver, becoming the laughing stock and showed some immense incompetence and failure to organize themselves. If the governmental parties are lucky this will throw such big doubt about the oppositions fitness to rule that the center-right parties win for a third time.