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Sweden’s Centre Party nominates Muharrem Demirok as new leader

Muharrem Demirok will take over as leader of Sweden's Centre Party if the party's election committee gets its way, its chairman said on Wednesday.

Published: 11 January 2023 10:38 CET
Sweden's Centre Party nominates Muharrem Demirok as new leader
Muharrem Demirok is expected to be voted in as leader of the Centre Party in February. Photo: Adam Ihse/TT

Demirok, a newly elected member of parliament and former deputy mayor in the city of Linköping, will be formally voted in as party leader at a conference on February 2nd. In theory party members could vote for someone else, but in practice it is always the candidate suggested by the election committee who wins.

He will succeed Annie Lööf, who announced four days after Sweden’s September election that she would be stepping down as leader of the party she has led since 2011.

Lööf grabbed headlines a few years ago when her party – at the cost of supporting the centre-left Social Democrats despite fundamental disagreements on economic issues – broke from its former allies on the right over their support for the far-right Sweden Democrats.

At a press conference announcing her resignation, Lööf said that her decision had been partly influenced by the threats she has faced.

Last summer she was an intended target of a suspected terror attack at Sweden’s Almedalen political festival, with the extreme-right perpetrator instead fatally stabbing a senior Swedish psychiatrist.

With its 24 seats, the Centre Party is a relatively small party in the Swedish parliament, but as a party that sits in – as the name suggests – the centre of Swedish politics, it has often held the role of kingmaker in recent years, although after the 2022 election it ended up on the losing side.

Although there have been no indications that Demirok is considering taking the party down a radically different path in the future, the leadership change “matters because in a sense the Centre Party holds the balance of power”, The Local’s publisher James Savage recently told the Sweden in Focus podcast.

“If the Centre Party were to choose, for example, the centre-right government, then that would give that government a much stronger mandate and much greater flexibility. Conversely if the Social Democrats were to lose the support of the Centre Party then that would make it much, much harder for them to form a government in the immediate or medium term,” he explained.

LISTEN: The Local’s panelists chat about the Centre Party leadership contest in the Sweden in Focus podcast

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POLITICS

Over a thousand people join protest against Stockholm attack

Over a thousand people joined a demonstration in Gubbängen, southern Stockholm, on Saturday, protesting Wednesday's attack by far-right extremists on a lecture organised by the Left and Green parties.

Published: 27 April 2024 15:36 CEST
Over a thousand people join protest against Stockholm attack

The demonstration, which was organised by the Left Party and the Green Party together with Expo, an anti-extremist magazine, was held outside the Moment theatre, where masked assailants attacked a lecture organised by the two parties on Wednesday. 

In the attack, the assailants – described as Nazis by Expo – let off smoke grenades and assaulted several people, three of whom were hospitalised. 

“Let’s say it how it is: this was a terror attack and that is something we can never accept,” said Amanda Lind, who is expected to be voted in as the joint leader of the Green Party on Sunday. 

She said that those who had attended the lecture had hoped to swap ideas about how to combat racism. 

“Instead they had to experience smoke bombs, assault and were forced to think ‘have they got weapons’?. The goal of this attack was to use violence to generate fear and silence people,” she said.  

EXPLAINED: What we know about the attack on a Swedish anti-fascist meeting

More than a thousand people gathered to protest the attack on a theatre in Gubbängen, Stockholm. Photo: Oscar Olsson/TT

Nooshi Dadgostar, leader of the Left Party, said that that society needed to stand up against this type of extreme-right violence. 

“We’re here today to show that which should be obvious: we will not give up, we will stand up for ourselves, and we shall never be silenced by racist violence,” said said.

Sofia Zwahlen, one of the protesters at the demonstration, told the DN newspaper that it felt positive that so many had turned up to show their opposition to the attacks. 

“It feels extremely good that there’s been this reaction, that we are coming together. I’m always a little worried about going to this sort of demonstration. But this feels safe.”

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