As Stockholm News wrote yesterday, the Sweden Democrats loses one seat in the Riksdag when William Petzäll leaves the party. Since the joint opposition had a three percentage point advantage over the government in the Riksdag, this doesn’t obviously change the situation in parliament but it makes the margins smaller and it opens up for potentially unpredictable situations.
The four parties in the government (the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Liberal peoples Party and the Christian Democrats has 173 mandates. The four opposition parties (the Social democrats, the Left Party, the Greens and the Sweden Democrats) had 176 (now 175). The opposition is however much too disrupted to form a joint alternative to the government. They dark horse is the Sweden Democrats, a party which none of the other seven parties want anything to do with. The issue is so sensitive that despite the even situation in the Riksdag, SD-parliamentarians who want to leave their party are not obviously welcome in other parties.
A month ago, Petzäll contacted the Moderate Party to see if he could have a future there if he left the Sweden Democrats. They turned him down. The public relation officer of the Moderate party Johan Elmberg said according o the daily newspaper Svenska dagbladet: - We will not co-operate with him in any form. He is elected on a SD-mandate and he doesn’t share our values.
The final outcome of this story is still not clear. The sweden Democrats wants Petzäll to leave the Riksdag sp they can put another candidate on his place but they have no legal possibility to force him to do so.