Sweden struggles to form government, parliament votes on centrist prime minister candidate

Sweden, which has been struggling to form a government since last month's general election, will seek a breakthrough next week by holding a parliamentary vote on the leader of the centrist fifth party as its candidate for prime minister.

According to Reuters, Swedish Parliament Speaker Andreas Norlen announced on the 29th (local time) that they will vote on whether to appoint Center Party leader Elisabeth Tand Linkvist as prime minister on the 4th.

The Center Party secured 25 out of 349 seats in the new parliament formed in last month's general election, making it the fifth party to achieve results following the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party.

At Chairman Norlen's request, Link Beast's representative attempted to form a centrist government excluding extreme left and right forces, such as the radical leftist Left Party and the far right Swedish Democratic Party, but recently declared failure.

Nevertheless, Chairman Norlen explained that in order to advance the process of forming a deadlocked government, they decided to hold a vote by nominating Link Beast's representative as a candidate for prime minister. He added that if the vote is rejected, he plans to ask current Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who leads the moderate conservative party, to try to form a government.

Swedish political circles are weighing the possibility that the proposal to appoint the Link Beast leader as prime minister will be rejected and the authority to form a government will ultimately be handed over to current Prime Minister Kristersson.

However, as it is currently unclear whether the Moderate Party, which won the second largest number of seats in this general election after the center-left Social Democratic Party, will be able to secure a majority of seats by uniting right-wing and centrist parties, it is observed that the possibility of the right to form a government returning to Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson in the future cannot be ruled out.

Representative Andersson, who served as Sweden's first female prime minister from November 2021 to October of the following year, attempted to form a coalition government with four left-wing parties, including the Social Democratic Party, the Center Party, the Green Party, and the Left Party, immediately after the general election, but it ended in vain as the ideologically centrist Center Party and the far-left Left Party showed differences in policy and cabinet composition.

After Andersson declared the failure of negotiations twice, Chairman Norlen pushed for the first parliamentary vote on Andersson as the prime ministerial candidate on the 15th, but it was rejected.

In Sweden, if a majority of the members of parliament do not oppose a candidate, they can elect a prime minister and form a government. The Speaker of the National Assembly can propose candidates up to four times, and if all are rejected, a general election must be held again.