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Email scandal ‘Sweden’s Watergate’

The email campaign against Moderate Party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt is a political own-goal on an almost unprecedented scale, a leading political expert has claimed.

Published: 24 February 2006 10:49 CET

Scandals of this type tend to die down fairly quickly, says Peter Esaiasson, professor of political science at Gothenburg University. This time, however, it could be different:

“The attacks are so serious, and many people can identify themselves with Reinfeldt’s situation.”

“The Social Democrats are going to find it hard to make moral arguments in the future. And it will be harder for them to conduct a traditional election campaign,” Esaiasson says.

The offending emails were sent by a party worker at Social Democrat headquarters. An internal investigation traced the person on Thursday, but Social Democrats have so far refused to release their colleague’s name or reveal the position he or she holds in the party.

Among the accusations levelled at Reinfeldt in the emails were that he paid labourers cash-in-hand.

Esaiasson makes the point that it is common for parties to try to dig for negative information about their opponents and spread it to the media. There have also been earlier examples of defamatory campaigns against politicians, such as rumours spread in conservative circles that prime minister Olof Palme was mentally ill and undergoing electric shock treatment.

“But in this case we’re talking about fabricated stories that can be linked directly to a party’s headquarters. I don’t know of anything similar in Sweden and it’s almost at the same level as the Watergate scandal.”

The beneficiaries of this campaign will be the Moderates. The Social Democrats have “scored an obvious own goal”, Esaiasson says. Opposition party leaders say they are sure the campaign has been organised from above. Esaiasson is less sure:

“I find it hard to believe that this was sanctioned from higher up, because it was so clumsily executed. This looks like the work of an individual.”

Asked whether the episode reveals something about the culture in Social Democrat headquarters, Esaiasson said that it did “to some extent.”

“The fact that someone has even come up with the idea to do something like this says something about the culture. This is not to say that it is considered acceptable.”

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POLITICS

‘Very little debate’ on consequences of Sweden’s crime and migration clampdown

Sweden’s political leaders are putting the population’s well-being at risk by moving the country in a more authoritarian direction, according to a recent report.

Published: 29 April 2024 08:56 CEST
'Very little debate' on consequences of Sweden's crime and migration clampdown

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast. 

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

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