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Reinfeldt and Borg top Sweden power rankings

Prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and finance minister Anders Borg are Sweden’s two most powerful people for the second year in a row, according to a new ranking published on Friday.

Published: 4 December 2010 09:31 CET

Reinfeldt and Borg top Sweden power rankings

Claiming the number three spot in Fokus magazine’s annual ranking of Sweden’s most powerful people is Liberal Party (Folkpartiet) leader and education minister Jan Björklund.

Riksbank head Stefan Ingves (6) and Industrivärden holding company chair Sverker Martin-Löf (8) were the only two non-politicians among a top ten dominated by top names from centre-right political parties.

Sweden’s most powerful woman, according to the rankings, is justice minister Beatrice Ask (5), with Centre Party leader and enterprise minister Maud Olofsson (9) ranking as the country’s second most powerful female.

Altogether, 28 women are included on the list of Sweden’s 100 most powerful people, with newcomer Sofia Arkelsten, the Moderate Party’s new party secretary, making her debut in the rankings at number 11.

Every year, Fokus ranks Sweden’s power brokers using a number of criteria, including media penetration, formal power, informal power, and extraordinary power.

The 2010 rankings are dominated by politicians and political operatives, which together claim 35 of the top 50 spots on the list.

Social Democratic party leader Mona Sahlin dropped from third position in the 2009 rankings down to the 22nd spot in 2010 following her party’s election loss and her decision to step down as party leader.

Meanwhile, her counterparts from the other two political parties which made up the centre-left Red-Green coalition remain high on the list, with Left Party leader Lars Ohly claiming the 12th spot, followed by Peter Eriksson (13) and Maria Wetterstrand (14) of the Green Party.

Jimmie Åkesson, head of the far-right Sweden Democrats, climbed into the 15th spot in the 2010 Fokus rankings, up from 42nd place last year.

Crown Princess Victoria rose to 17th place from 23rd place, while her father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, also enjoyed a bump in the rankings, landing in position 37 after managing only 70th place in 2009.

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'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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