The Left Party struggles with Abdukardir Ali's timeout in the middle of government negotiations

There is no good timing for stories like the one surrounding leftist Mohamed Abdukardir Ali. The affair had probably hit the Left Party even harder before the election than it will now. But it's miserable so that's enough for V - Abdukardir Ali's decision to take "timeout" is not even a temporary help for the party. Timeout is a temporary solution that those in power use to manage crises when nothing better is available.

Everything is still about information from a police investigation - at the time of writing, as far as is known, no person has been served with suspicion, charged or convicted. But according to DN's sources, it is about "serious accusations". And those who, even before the election, labeled the Left Party as unfit for government consider themselves to have already had their fill. Both the Center and the Social Democrats signal that the Left Party's CV has become even weaker than it already was in their eyes.

Nevertheless, the initial values ​​that govern the government negotiations have not changed - regardless of how the deal ends, the Left Party's parliamentary mandates are necessary for an Andersson-led government to be formed. This also applies if a member were to drop out. Basically, V has the same opportunity to continue pushing its demand to sit in governments that need the party's support.

But the story can - somewhat depending on how drawn out it is - affect the Left Party's opinion figures. And if the government negotiations reach a critical point where the risk of a by-election is imminent, the party that looks set to lose many voters in a new election will have a weaker negotiating position.

In the reporting of what happened, the big and the small are mixed - some information is serious, others seem more circumspect. Driving people to polling stations or marking ballots in advance need neither be illegal nor even inappropriate. If, on the other hand, it turns out that someone paid people to vote for a certain candidate, it will punish V severely, however it is labeled in a legal sense.

The Left Party, like other parties, requests that their candidates sign a declaration in which they promise to "be a good representative of the Left Party" and promise to tell if they have any corpses in the closet that could damage trust in the party.

There is nothing stopping a person from hiding things in their past, the candidate's affidavit has no legal force. It rests ultimately on the party organization that puts people on its parliamentary list to keep track of its candidates. The Left Party has demonstrated in several parts of the country that this control is weak - a number of names have been deleted after attention in the media. In some cases because they expressed anti-Semitism.

Letting Abdukardir Ali take time out while waiting for the investigation to end sounds like a way to honor the legal principle that says you are innocent until proven guilty. But it is rather a feeble attempt to push the problem in front of them. The party leadership would probably prefer that he resign, regardless of where the deal ends up. Every hour that Abdukardir Ali remains in his parliamentary mandate - because he does so regardless of the talk of "timeout" - is another hour of annoying publicity for a party that wants to spend all its time agitating for a place in the government.

The nightmare for both V and the other parties in Magdalena Andersson's proposed government is of course that it ends with a re-election in Dalarna. Then the Tidö parties could win the election they just lost. There is still no indication that it will end there - but the mere thought can heat up the brains of partisans on all sides.