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Swedish feminist party loses only seat in Europe

Sweden's pioneering feminist party has been eliminated in Europe after a full four fifths of its voters deserted it, leaving it far below the requirements for a seat in European Parliament.

Published: 27 May 2019 07:24 CEST

Swedish feminist party loses only seat in Europe

Feminist Initiative MEP Soraya Post at the party's election party in Stockholm. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Feminist Initiative had won just 0.8 percent of the vote when 96 percent of voting districts had declared on Monday morning, meaning Soraya Post, its sole MEP, will be coming home to Sweden.

“This is a grass roots movement which is going to grow stronger,” Post said after the devastating result was clear, with the party posting a tweet saying “The Fight Continues”.

KAMPEN FORTSÄTTER ? pic.twitter.com/2Ekp4o0nMn

— Feministerna (Fi) (@Feministerna) May 26, 2019

The party had built itself a strong following among young urban people at the time the last European Elections were held in 2014, breaking through with 5.5 percent of the vote.

But it has been suffering since its charismatic leader Gudrun Schyman stood down before Christmas and was replaced by joint leaders Gita Nabavi and Farida al-Abani.

In Europe, Post has campaigned to have the Council of Europe's Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence turned into European law.

The party also wants to extend Sweden's sex consent law and its ban on buying sex to all European nations.

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Can you rely on Sweden's Postnord to deliver cards and presents on time?

What can you still send and hope for it to be delivered by Christmas?

The Christmas deadline for letters and parcels outside of Sweden already passed on December 12th, as has the deadline for ordering anything online and hoping for it to arrive on time, with most e-commerce companies advising customers that anything ordered later than December 19th will not arrive in time.

But if you’re sending first-class letters, pre-paid parcels, and small packages for delivery through the letterbox, you can still send them up until December 21st. The same goes for other parcel services such as Postnord MyPack Home, PostNord MyPack Home small, PostNord MyPack Collect, and Postpaket parcels.

And if you’re willing to pay a bit extra, you can send express mail letters, express parcels, and first class ‘varubrev’ small parcels up until December 22nd.

“Those dates still apply. We have written in a press statement that if you send by those dates you can be pretty sure that they will arrive in time,” Anders Porelius, head of press at PostNord, told The Local on Tuesday.

But can you trust Postnord to deliver when they say they will?

Not entirely.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, Sweden’s postal regulator, ruled on December 8th that the company was failing to meet its regulatory target of delivering 95 percent of all letters within two working days, with 28 million letters delivered late between June and November.

An investigative documentary by TV4’s Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) programme, was sent pictures showing huge piles of late, undelivered letters in one of PostNord’s terminals, and interviewed postal workers who said that they were unable to complete their deliveries now they had been moved from daily to every other day, as they had twice as many letters to deliver on the days when they worked.

“You get yelled at by the customers, and rightly so, you get yelled at by your bosses, and you scold yourself because you feel like you’re not able to do enough,” said Emilia Leijon, one postal worker. “We pretty much never manage to deliver a whole satchel. There’s too much post and too little time.”

What is PostNord doing about the delays?

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority has given the company until January 30th to carry out an analysis into why it is not managing to meet its targets, and to draw up an action plan of how it is going to improve.

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