Observing Sweden - Pendulum Swings

Swedish PMs to be called to scrutiny committee

 
Published: The Local.se  30 Jan 2016 15:29 GMT+01:00

Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven and his centre-right predecessor Fredrik Reinfeldt will be called before a scrutiny committee to explain their handling of the refugee influx of recent years, a committee member said on Saturday.

Jonas Millard, an MP for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats and member of the Constitutional Committee (KU), confirmed the plans as he announced that his party would report both men to the committee. “In a sense it is both the present and the previous government who bear responsibility for the situation that has arisen,” he said.

“We will send a battery of questions to both the current and previous governments,” he told the Dagens Industri newspaper. “Ultimately, it may also be the case that we call both Stefan Löfven and Fredrik Reinfeldt to hearings. We may also request documents which are not public.”
The Sweden Democrats’ move follows similar actions from the center-right Moderate Party, whose parliamentary leader Jessica Polfjärd, on Friday morning reported Stefan Löfven and a several other government ministers to be investigated.

The Sweden Democrat’s referral came as party activists organized a street protest in central Stockholm where they called on the government to resign over its handling of last year’s refugee crisis. The so-called “People’s Demonstration”, was organized by Sweden Democrat activists Johan Widen and Therese Larsson. According to Expressen newspaper several demonstrators were restrained by handcuffs, and ten police vans and a police helicopter were present to monitor the protest.

Speakers at the demonstration included Gothenburg priest Axel W Karlsson, who was in 2014 expelled from the Sweden Democrats for his articles in the far Right Nya Tider magazine, and Hans Erling Jensen, who was expelled from the party for his extreme views on Islam.