The Left Party is careful that "it's straight pipes that apply", said deputy party leader Ida Gabrielsson the evening after the election. The coffee maker is always on, ready for anyone who wants to talk to the Left Party, she continued on Sunday. Everyone needs to stop fooling around and start talking.
Two days later, the party leadership has gone up in smoke.
The suspicions that have driven the party leadership to run and hide are serious: Democracy's most sacred process may have been perverted. In a reconnaissance mission, the police allegedly saw how people were pushed into a car and stopped at ATMs where money was withdrawn (DN 22/9). Ballot papers must be marked with a cross.
The Left Party's new Member of Parliament Mohamed Abdukardir Ali is part of the investigation, but not suspected of any crime. Even a man who was crossed into the municipal council for the party is now taking a "timeout". A word that can be translated to: get paid in exchange for not being seen for a while.
In pictures, Mohamed Abdukardir Ali can be seen arriving at Stockholm Central on Monday, and is immediately met by a group of leftists who take him away from the place. According to information to SVT, the party must have tried to get him to leave his Riksdag seat. And Borlänge Tidning reports that in return he should have been offered a job at the party's office.
So how is it? The party secretary, sent out to give some parrot answers, regrets that "there are a lot of rumors going around right now". Yes, how come? Could it be because the party leadership has closed itself in - with its coffee maker.
Again.
Just as in the previous scandals of the year, Nooshi Dadgostar and deputy party leader Ida Gabrielsson react forcefully - by making themselves unreachable for the first few days.
Just as in the previous scandals of the year, Nooshi Dadgostar and deputy party leader Ida Gabrielsson react forcefully - by making themselves unreachable for the first few days.
No party is immune to suspicions of electoral fraud. But the Left Party is particularly vulnerable:
When it became clear that Mohamed Abdukardir Ali had been elected to the Riksdag, the group leader for the party in Borlänge told him that he lacked contact information for the party's new member. He "didn't really know who it was". When the party leadership then realized what a disaster it was - that he openly admitted that they have no idea who was sent to the Riksdag - the same group leader had to face the media again with a completely new message: "I certainly know who it is".
Safely.
Ida Gabrielsson has previously explained that "it is extremely difficult to keep track of all the thousands of candidates far down the lists, because they are not in elective places either" (TV4 7/9). But that is exactly what they do: Whoever is on a list can be elected.
That's the whole point; for Mohamed Abdukardir Ali, 648 personal checks were enough to get from ninth place in Borlänge straight into the Riksdag.
So how is it that other parties are able to carry out basic checks on their own representatives, while the Left Party goes to waste? Could it have to do with the party not even trying? And could it in turn be about the party's apparent unwillingness to take responsibility for its own mistakes?
How is it that other parties manage to carry out basic checks on their own representatives? Could it have to do with V not even trying?
When Expressen revealed earlier this year that the party's lists were full of people with unpleasant views, one would have thought that a party leadership would feel grateful to have been helped to clean their party of anti-Semitism and terror glorification.
But no, instead the Expressen was suspected. Or as Nooshi Dadgostar's partner put it on X: Inas Hamdan, the reporter behind the revelation, "is not a journalist... but a political campaigner of the worst kind".
With that attitude towards one's own failures, it is difficult to develop.
After hearing the Left Party thunder after the election that other parties do not show their voters respect, one also wonders: does the Left Party take its voters seriously? You offer them candidates who you don't know who they are and what they think.
Or whose errands they go.
The suspicions of election fraud came like a bolt from the blue, says the group leader in Borlänge. But there have been many flashes in the sky of the Left Party recently.
And since the party was not punished for scandals about terrorist glorification and anti-Semitism in the election, Nooshi Dadgostar seems to have concluded that silence was a good method. But now it's no longer about attracting left-wing voters in the election, now it's about showing half the population why a collaboration with this party is a reasonable way forward. Then you can't run and hide.
Straight pipes - what happened to them Ida Gabrielsson?
