Litany of woes plague Swedish PM's first 100 days
World
Litany of woes plague Swedish PM's first 100 days
Stockholm (AFP) – For Sweden s new prime minister, the honeymoon never really began. Ulf Kristersson s woes have piled up since taking office three months ago, from stalled NATO accession talks to an aide s illegal eel fishing.
Dismal opinion polls on Friday only added to the right-wing leader s long list of headaches since he took power 100 days ago thanks to an unprecedented alliance with the far right.
With skyrocketing inflation, gangs settling scores with bombings and grenades, and NATO membership talks on hold, "the public is not very satisfied" with the government s performance, political scientist Patrik Ohberg of the University of Gothenburg told AFP.
Sweden s clash with Turkey over its NATO membership bid escalated this week with Ankara postponing talks after a Koran burning outside Ankara s embassy in Stockholm angered the Muslim world and sparked calls for a boycott of Swedish goods.
Inflation is at a three-decade high that exceeds the eurozone s, while the government faces a backlash for its four-month delay in paying compensation to households for soaring electricity prices.
In addition, authorities are struggling to contain a surge of almost nightly gang shootings and explosions that have rocked Stockholm since Christmas. With the strained police calling in reinforcements, experts say it will likely take years to resolve the problem.
And to top it all off, one of Kristersson s top advisers resigned this week after admitting lying to police about illegally fishing eel in an embarrassing brouhaha for a government elected on a law-and-order ticket.
Doing a bad job
All of this comes just weeks after Sweden took over the rotating presidency of the EU, vowing to maintain unity on Ukraine at a tumultuous time.
But already concerns have arisen in the EU parliament about Sweden s handling of migration and climate issues due to the government s reliance on the far right.
According to a Demoskop poll in the Aftonbladet daily on Friday, only three out of 10 Swedes questioned said they had "confidence" in the government.
An effigy of the Swedish anti-Islam activist Rasmus Paludan is hung in Idlib, Syria, in protest at him burning a Koran in Stockholm
And a majority said it was doing a "pretty bad" or "very bad" job handling the country s NATO accession talks.
Turkey has been blocking Sweden s and Finland s membership bids because of what it perceives as Stockholm s failure to crack down on Kurdish groups that Ankara views as "terrorists".
A fuming Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Sweden this week for allowing anti-Turkey protests, including the Koran burning, and postponed the accession talks.
The decision further diminished the two countries chances of joining NATO before Turkey s May elections.
The Koran burning, by a fringe far-right politician, came just weeks after a Kurdish support group hung an effigy of Erdogan in front of Stockholm City Hall, which also sparked outrage in Ankara but which Swedish prosecutors said did not constitute a crime.
Kowtowing to Erdogan?
Kristersson has tried to smooth the tensions with Ankara. At a press conference this week, he said there were "provocateurs who wanted to spoil Sweden s relations with other countries" and foil its membership bid.
"No national security question is more important than that we, with Finland, quickly become members of NATO," he said.
But debate is raging over how far Sweden should go to appease Turkey.
Kristersson defended Sweden s broad definition of free speech but expressed his "sympathy for all Muslims who are offended" by the "deeply disrespectful" Koran burning.
Kristersson s three-party minority government relies on an unprecedented alliance with the far-right Sweden Democrats.
But cracks have begun to appear in their cooperation.
Last week, Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson accused Kristersson of "kowtowing" to Erdogan.
And Swedes appear to largely agree with many feeling "that the government has made too many concessions to Erdogan", said Karin Nelsson, the head of pollsters Demoskop.
But NATO is only one of many issues Swedes are upset about, she stressed, citing energy prices, the climate, health care and gangs.
The government "has been under fire since it took power", she said.
