Resigned when budget was rejected and coalition was broken
Sweden’s first female prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, 54, resigned on the 24th (local time) after just seven hours of being elected prime minister, the Financial Times reported on the same day. Andersson was scheduled to take office on the 26th as the first female prime minister in Sweden in 100 years since women were given the right to vote.
This is because the conflict that arose during the election process has spread to the rejection of the budget and the dissolution of the coalition. The Social Democrats, to which Anderson-elect belongs, won only a third of the seats, so the Social Democrats joined the left-wing party in the coalition government instead of conceding a pension increase. As a result, Andersson was elected prime minister with 174 out of 349 votes against. However, the center-leaning Center Party withdrew its support for the budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly by the Social Democrats, saying that it had “compromised with the Left Party”, and the center-conservative Christian Democratic Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats passed the budget proposal. The coalition partner, the Green Party, protested and announced its withdrawal from the coalition.
Anderson-elect expressed his resignation, saying, “There is a constitutional practice in which the prime minister resigns when a party leaves the coalition.” However, with the Left and Green parties still supporting Anderson-elect, there is a high possibility that he will be re-elected as prime minister in September next year.
Correspondent Sora Kim sora@seoul.co.kr
