Attempts to form a new government in Sweden have hit a snag after the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party, Magdalena Andersson, said she was unable to muster enough support, even though her center-left bloc won by a narrow margin in last month's election, Reuters reported.
"I can conclude that at this stage there is no possibility of forming a government," Andersson told a news conference. She said she had lost the support of the Left Party (a socialist, former communist party – ed.).
Now the speaker of the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, is likely to hand an exploratory mandate to form a government to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Kristersson's moderate coalition party has the second-largest parliamentary group in the Riksdag.
In the vote on September 13, the center-left opposition won a slim majority of 176 seats in parliament to 173 for the center-right.
The result was driven by a decline in support for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats in the northern country of 10.6 million, bucking a Europe-wide trend of the far-right rising.
Despite the center-left victory, the election, which many described as a referendum on Kristersson's promise to include the Sweden Democrats, in the ruling coalition, the formation of a stable government remained in question.
Andersson said she had given up trying to form a government because the Left Party, one of the parties she needed to form a parliamentary majority, had announced that it would support the center-right candidate for parliamentary speaker.
The Left Party had previously said that it would only support Andersson for the post of prime minister.
Andersson will likely get a second chance to form a cabinet if the center-right also fails in this task.
According to the constitution, the parliamentary speaker has the right to propose up to four candidates for prime minister to parliament, but if all are rejected, Sweden goes to early elections.
On Friday, the police announced that they had opened an investigation into election fraud in the capital.
The news was announced only days after prosecutors opened their own investigation into alleged voting irregularities in the town of Borlänge, central Sweden, a case that could jeopardize 11 parliamentary seats if the Election Review Board orders a rerun of the vote there.
In 2018, Social Democrat Stefan Löfven needed 134 days to form a government, Reuters recalls.