Briefest tenure: First Swedish woman PM resigns only 7.5 hours later!

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: It was, perhaps, the shortest tenure for a Prime Minister anywhere: the woman who made history by becoming the first female head of the Swedish government, resigned only after seven-and-a-half hours!

Magdalena Andersson, 54, did so on Wednesday when she lost the vote on her budget proposals in the 349-seat parliament and her coalition partner, the Green Party, quit the two-party minority government, the media reported on Thursday.

Altogether, 117 lawmakers voted ‘yes’ to Andersson, 174 rejected her appointment while 57 abstained and one lawmaker remained absent.

Under the Swedish Constitution, a PM can be named and allowed to govern as long as a parliamentary majority — a minimum of 175 lawmakers — is not against him/her.

Andersson resigned after her budget proposals were defeated and the one presented by the opposition, including the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, the third-largest party rooted in a neo-Nazi movement, was carried.

The vote was 154-143 in favor of the opposition’s budget proposal.

Andersson, leader of the Social Democratic Party, stepped down, saying: ”For me, it is about respect, but I also do not want to lead a government where there may be grounds to question its legitimacy,” she told a news conference.

The woman, who was Finance Minister before briefly becoming the PM, informed parliamentary Speaker Andreas Norlen that she is still interested in leading a Social Democratic one-party government. He said he will discuss the situation with eight party leaders.

Andersson said that “a coalition government should resign if a party chooses to leave the government. Despite the fact that the parliamentary situation is unchanged, it needs to be tried again.”

Earlier in the day, she had said she could “govern the country with the opposition’s budget.”

Even though the Green Party pulled out of her government, it said it is prepared to stand behind Andersson in a new vote to tap a PM.

The approved budget aims at reducing taxes, increasing salaries for police officers, and more money to different sectors of Sweden’s judiciary system.

Andersson’s appointment as a PM was a landmark for Sweden, one of Europe’s most progressive countries in terms of gender relations, but which had yet to have a woman in the top political post.

She had replaced Stefan Lofven as party leader and the PM, roles he relinquished earlier this year.