Arya News - Sweden’s centre-right Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he will resign after losing the parliamentary elections.
Sweden’s prime minister says he will resign after the left-wing opposition secured a narrow victory in the country’s general election, though it faces tough negotiations ahead to form a coalition government.
The vote count ended on Thursday with the Swedish Election Authority announcing that the four left-wing opposition parties won 176 seats in the 349-seat parliament in Stockholm, the Riksdag.
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Only about 50,000 votes separated the two sides in the country of 10.6 million people.
Shortly after the results were announced, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he would resign.
“Now, it is the speaker who will lead the next stage of the way to a new government. I am henceforth requesting that I be relieved of the office of prime minister to allow that work to start immediately,” Kristersson said in a letter posted on social media X.
Former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s centre-left Social Democrats finished as the biggest single party , despite losing some support.
The result bolsters her hope of regaining the job she lost in 2022, but she will still face a complicated task to turn it into a government due to ideological divisions within the left-leaning bloc, which is made up of the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Greens Party and the Centre Party.
Andersson, who was Sweden’s first female prime minister in 2021-2022 and was finance minister for seven years before that, will notably need to reconcile differences between the socialist Left Party and the liberal Centre Party.
The Centre Party has said it will oppose a government that includes cabinet posts for the Left Party, which has insisted on having a minister. Andersson has meanwhile ruled out a government that includes the Left Party, but wants their support in Sweden’s parliament.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who leads one of the few left-wing governments in Europe, hailed the result.
“Social democracy has won the elections in Sweden. After four years of a right-wing government with the far right, the Swedes are once again backing the welfare state, social justice and the green agenda,” Sanchez said in a post to X.
Parliament can vote on a new prime minister on September 29 at the earliest.
Kristersson said on election night that he would respect Andersson’s attempts to form a government, but wished her “good luck” given the divisions among her left-wing bloc.
Meanwhile, in a big surprise, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, which entered parliament in 2010, lost support for the first time , garnering 17.5 percent of the vote, down three percentage points from the last election in 2022.