The Swedish parliament has elected current Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson as the next prime minister, who will head a minority government to implement a 2022 budged drafted and passed by parliamentary opposition, Swedish news portal TheLocal.se reports.
On Monday, November 29, in the second vote of confidence in six days the Social Democrat leader was elected as prime minister with an extremely small margin – 173 members of parliament voted against her. It would have taken two more to make her lose the vote.
Read also: WHO: Covid’s Omikron variant – serious global health risk, as analysis continues
The Sweden’s first female prime minister was supported by 100 Social Democrat legislators and Amineh Kakabaveh, parliament’s only independent, while the Green Party, the Left Party and the Centre Party choose to abstain.
In Sweden, a prime ministerial candidate does not need the support of a majority in parliament, but rather has to have a majority not voting against him or her. Andersson will also be governing on the opposition’s budget rather than her own. It will be Sweden’s first governmental budget co-authored by far-right party Sweden Democrats, TheLocal.se reports.