Left Party loses in Swedish poll
SWEDEN’S GENERAL election on 15 September saw the return
of Göran Persson’s government, with the ruling social democrats (SAP)
increasing their vote to 40% from their 36% share in 1998.
Nationally, the Left Party and the conservative Moderates
were the biggest losers. The Left Party (ex-Communists) had doubled their vote
in the 1998 election, largely at the expense of the SAP, but this time their ‘fatal
attraction’ to the ruling social democrats and support for spending cuts was
roundly punished at the polls. The Left Party hoped to win 20% of the vote, but
fell instead from 12% to 8.3% as many former voters swung behind the government.
One Left Party leader attributed the swing to the SAP to their ‘left policies’
– an incredible statement. Rather, fear of a victory for the bloc of four ‘bourgeois’
(borgerlig) parties (Moderates, Liberals, Centre and Christian Democrats) on a
programme of massive tax and spending cuts, galvanised support behind prime
minister Göran Persson’s government.
When two parties pursue identical policies – as in the
case of the SAP and Left Party – the larger one usually wins. The Left Party’s
rightward shift and obsession with coalition politics cost them dearly. Prior to
the election the party ran over 100 local councils, mostly together with the SAP
and Greens, but sometimes in coalition with the ‘bourgeois bloc’. In every
case they pursued balanced budgets, cuts and privatisations, arguing ‘we can’t
afford ideology’, in the words of one Left Party council leader.
Nationally, the social democrats were the main beneficiaries
of the Left Party’s slide. But in many areas it was more radical alternatives
– in Umeå and Luleå, for example, where Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (RS),
the Swedish section of CWI made gains (see box) – or parties which were seen
as more radical, such as local health service parties (sjukvårdspartier), which
won support at the Left Party’s expense. Almost one in four voters in
Norrbotten (the northern region where Luleå is the capital) voted for the local
health service party. In regions where Left Party politicians have voted to
close hospitals they lost heavily to such parties, despite the fact that these
parties too have proposed cuts and privatisations. While the Norrbotten Party (Norrbottensparti),
launched by the former miners’ leader and council leader in Kiruna, Lars
Törnman, failed to get into parliament, the party got 13,880 votes in
Norrbotten. Significantly, while Törnman’s ‘left’ reputation in the
region delivered this respectable result, his party lost power to the SAP in the
town of Kiruna, where his administration has also presided over cuts.
Within the bourgeois alliance, the Moderates – most
closely associated with tax cuts – suffered their worst result since 1973
(15.1%) while the liberal Folkparti tripled its vote (to 13.3%) by openly
flirting with racism. Rather than focusing on the health service or education,
where the total workforce has shrunk by a quarter after ten years of cuts and
cash limits, the mass media seized upon the Liberals’ proposals for language
tests for citizenship and lower benefits to immigrants, turning this into the
main election issue. A ‘Danish’ election campaign, with established parties
echoing some of the far right’s propaganda, helped legitimise the small racist
fringe. The racist Sweden Democrats (SD) went from eight council seats in five
towns, to 49 seats in over 20 mostly smaller towns in southern Sweden. This is a
warning that reactionary forces can also begin to fill the political vacuum.
While falling far short of the 4% needed to enter parliament, the SD vote nearly
quadrupled to over 1% (76,300 votes) giving them the same rights as
parliamentary parties at the next election (2006) to free distribution of
election papers.
The threat from racist parties was a central element in the
RS election campaign. The hypocrisy of the Liberals, one of the governing
parties in the Stockholm region, was highlighted in a protest organised by RS
outside the city hall which, as Svenska Dagbladet reported, "accused [the
Liberals] of seriously undermining the quality of Swedish For Immigrants, SFI,
while at the same time demanding Swedish tests for citizenship". RS also
organised a demo of 400 school students in Haninge, south of Stockholm, against
the fascist National Democrats who sit in the council. An attack by a small gang
of fascists on the demo was repulsed, but as Metro later reported, "Mattias
Bernhardsson, candidate for Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna in Haninge, received
a death threat from a representative of the anti-immigrant National
Democrats". This threat was a direct result of the campaign in Haninge.
The RS election campaign got considerable media exposure,
for example an article in Dagens Nyheter, the country’s second biggest daily (‘Rättvisepartiet
fights against war’). In its core areas, the party won over a significant
layer of public sector workers, particularly women, as well as youth and
immigrants. Campaigns in defence of the public sector, for example in Umeå,
connected the party in the consciousness of many workers with the struggle
against cuts. Typically, the social democrats resorted to crude anti-communism
against RS. The pro-SAP daily Västerbottens Folkblad carried an article by
Umeå’s council leader with a picture of Leon Trotsky and the headline ‘Offensive
with revolution and lies’. The paper agreed to take in a reply – after the
elections! Despite these largely ineffective attacks, RS achieved the best
results of any force to the left of the parliamentary parties. The ex-Maoist
KPML(r) lost one council seat each in the towns of Gislaved and Karlshamn,
leaving them with a total of 11 seats in much smaller councils than Umeå and
Luleå. The USEC-affiliate Socialistiska Partiet (SP) held onto their only
council seat in Sweden in Köping.
In Luleå, the campaign against a school closure in the
working class district of Svartöstaden saw RS emerge as the overall winner in
that district. The local paper, Norrbottens Kuriren, described the result as a
‘knockout’ against the previously dominant Left Party (which had voted to
close the school). An article about this - ‘RS went home here’ - made a
comparison between the two parties, in which the local Left Party leader
defended making cuts: "We wanted to see what was in the boat before rocking
it". Jonas Brännberg, one of the new RS councillors, replied "My God,
they’ve been around since 1917, they can’t claim they don’t know what they’re
doing!"
Many international commentators have falsely interpreted
Persson’s victory as a revival of the old, reformist, social democracy. On the
contrary, the SAP’s program was deliberately vague, containing few promises,
while the prime minister told journalists he was prepared to make cuts ‘in
every area’ if necessary to avert a return to budget deficits. Speculation is
rife in the press about a ‘hidden plan’ for budget cuts, while business
journal Finans Vision exclaimed that "Persson’s victory prepares the way
for the euro", with a referendum on the single currency due in 2003. The
pro-Liberal Dagens Nyheter commented that "the market has never believed
that a bourgeois government could take the country into the EMU as easily as the
red block".
The gains for RS in the north of Sweden, plus the new
recruits made during the campaign, put the CWI section in a far stronger
position to intervene in such struggles.
Laurence Coates,
Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna
Five councillors
elected for CWI Sweden
THE ELECTIONS saw important
gains for Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (RS), the Swedish section of
the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). Elections to all
three levels of government – national, regional and local – take
place on the same day in Sweden. In the two most populous cities in
northern Sweden, Umeå and Luleå, RS now has five city councillors, up
from two in 1998. These gains show the potential for a fighting
socialist alternative at a national level.
In Umeå city council,
where RS was first elected in 1991, the party increased its vote by 38%
(from 2,238 in 1998 to 2,948 this time), winning a third council seat.
In Luleå, RS more than doubled its 1998 result (from 608 votes to
1,518), cruising into the council for the first time with two seats. In
both cases, this was at the expense of the Left Party. In Luleå, the
Left Party lost four seats, two to RS and two to a local ‘health
service party’. |