by ChristianC » Tue Sep 21, 2010 12:21 pm
Indeed! It seems I have to explain some stuff about the Swedish Parliament, which is the actual constitutional body that we, as a people elect.
The Parliament, or the Riksdag, composes 349 seats, of which each party that gets more than 4% of the votes are given a proportional amount. Although we have a multi-party system in Sweden, where anyone can form a political party (I think there might be some requirements if you wish to get state-funds for your party, but I'm not sure about this part), generally things are divided into the Red-Greens (Social Democrats (S), Founded by the Union Movements at the beginning of the 20th century and has traditionally been the biggest party in Sweden, although in recent elections they've been dropping significantly, Left Party (LP), the most socialistic and feminist party if you don't count the fringe, used to call themselves the Left Communist Party, but that has since been dropped as they wish to distance themselves from the Soviet image of Communism, and the Environment Party (EP), who originally branched off from the LPP due to differences in opinions regarding environmental questions. Today, they are a strong part of the Red-Green union and have drifted to a more leftist political agenda, although they still primarily focus on matters regarding the environment and solutions to pollutions) and the Alliance, composed of the Moderates (M) (basically they are a Liberal party, but in Sweden they are one of the more right-aligned parties), the Center Party (CP) (traditionally perceived as a market-liberal party, historically composed mostly of farmers although in recent days this has obviously shifted, they would like to call themselves environmentally conscious, but that's debatable), the Liberal People's Party (LPP) (traditionally the most liberal party, but recent events seem to indicate that they are, ironically, the most fascist one in the parliament) and the Christian Democrats (CD) (sadly, not my party), who traditionally have been counted as some of the most right-winged, although in a nice, grandmotherly way. They've stood for good, solid, traditional family values (i.e. ban homosexuals and abortions) and are, by most people, considered a somewhat embarrassing remains from ye olde tyme when people went to church so trolls wouldn't eat their kids.
So, those are the two big blocks.
Now, as you can see, the Red-Green have a smaller amount of parties, only 3, versus the 4 parties of the Blues, the Alliance. However, historically the Reds, and later Red-Greens have been very, very strong, but recent elections have seen their results dwindle strongly, and right now the only party to win over the Alliance amongst the Red-Greens is the Social Democrats, who got a measly 0,9% more of the votes (30,9%) over the Moderates, the biggest Alliance party. This is DEVASTATING for that party, since traditionally they've been in the area of between 36-40something, and it's not better that the Left Party has suffered an equally tremendous decline. Only the Environment Party came out on top, with 7,2%, which made them the third biggest party (yes, you read right, 7,2% makes them the third biggest party, with the LPP coming in a strong fourth at 7,1%).
So, the election came out like this:
The Alliance : 49,3%
M: 30%
CP: 6,6%
LPP: 7,1%
CD: 5,6%
Red-Green : 43,7 %
S: 30,9%
LP: 5,6%
EP: 7,2%
So, in this regard, the Alliance got a victory of almost 5 percent above their opposition, the Red-Greens. This means that they get the larger amount of chairs in the parliament and can vote through most of their own motions. HOWEVER, there are still a total of 7% unaccounted for votes. Out of these, 1,3% went to other, fringe parties, meaning that they did not get any seats in the parliament. BUT, 5,6% of these went to the Sweden Deomcrats. This means that, if they so wish, the SD can vote against the motions proposed by the Alliance, thus giving the Red-Green, whether or not they want it, another 5,6%, resulting in a total amount of 49,4%, so an unanimous opposition would thus render the Alliance motion NULL.
Now, the Red-Greens are obviously not going to collaborate with the SD. Besides the obvious PR Disaster this would invoke, they are also ideologically very, very different. The LP, for example, traditionally represent socialistic ideas, and several members are outspoken communists. This does not go well together with a party that is generally Nazis Light. The SD are also going to try to form agreements with other parties in order to get their own agenda through, by promising to vote for what those parties want in exchange for them voting on what they want.
So there you have it, chaos.
Most likely the Alliance can run their own race as a majority, with SD being some kind of wild-card that play the role of weighmaster, i.e. they can sink motions or make them win.
Obviously, this is a gross simplification, as politicians are allowed to vote against their own 'team', but this generally doesn't happen. The LPP had a funny incident when the FRA law was voted through, as some of the more 'in the know' members considered this gross infringement of public privacy a breach of everything that is good and holy, but they were finally clubbed to agreement by revote after revote after revote.
TL;DR
Even though they're only 5,6%, they can still fuck shit up.