Swedish conservative leader Ulf Kristersson was on Monday elected prime minister in parliament as the head of a new government backed for the first time by the far-right Sweden Democrats.
Kristersson, 58, was elected with 176 votes in favour and 173 against, after announcing a deal Friday to form a three-party government between his Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, supported in parliament by their key ally the far-right Sweden Democrats.
The four presented a 62-page roadmap for their cooperation, calling for major crackdowns on crime and immigration and the construction of new nuclear reactors, among other things.
Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson told parliament that while his party would have preferred to be in the government and hold cabinet posts, the policies the government pursued were most important.
“It is what the government does that is important, not what the government looks like,” Akesson said.
His party was the big winner in Sweden’s September 11 general election, emerging as the second-largest party with a record 20.5 percent of votes behind outgoing prime minister Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats, which have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s.
While the quartet has presented a united front, they have traditionally been divided on a number of key policy areas and major concessions were made in the agreement, primarily to meet the far-right’s demands.
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