One for the Ins

All over the world, disenchantment with governments of every coloration seems to have become epidemic. As a result, no "in" regime can feel very secure. Few parties have been more in than Sweden's Social Democrats, who have held power for 36 years and consequently seemed ripe for a fall. Last week, in an unprecedentedly heavy turnout (89%), Sweden's voters not only returned the party to power but also gave it a parliamentary majority for the first time since World War II.

What kept the Social Democrats upright more than anything else was Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia, which encouraged countless voters to stick with a known quantity. The chief loser was Sweden's tiny Communist Party, which normally inherits any protest votes from the Social Democrats' left. This time it was the Communists who were on the wrong end of the protest vote. Communist Leader Carl-Henrik Hermansson roundly denounced the Soviet invasion and was denounced by Moscow radio in turn as "the chatterbox husband of a millionairess"--his wife is the daughter of a Goeteborg clothing-store tycoon. Hermansson regularly ignores Moscow's line, and the party has become so bourgeois that he once campaigned on a platform of two houses for every family. Still, Sweden's voters were not reassured. While the Communists had won more than 6% of the popular vote and eight seats in the 233-seat Riksdag in 1964's election, last week they won only 2.9% of the popular vote, and were reduced to a maximum of three seats.

Lost Expectations. Another factor in the Social Democrats' resounding victory was the inability of Sweden's opposition Conservative, Liberal and agrarian Center parties to forge an effective alliance. Overconfidence played a part. When Norway threw out its long-ruling Labor Party three years ago, and Denmark followed suit by unseating its Social Democrats last January, Swedish opposition leaders thought they perceived a trend to the right, and smugly expected Sweden to move in the same direction. The trend proved more apparent than real, since nowhere has any part of Scandinavia's all-embracing welfare system been repealed. Sweden's opposition parties, in fact, promised bigger and better welfare payments, compulsory unemployment insurance and lower rents on new housing.

Pending a final tally of absentee ballots that will take another week, the Social Democrats wound up with twelve additional seats, or "mandates," for a total of 125 and their first absolute majority in the chamber since 1940. The party had not really expected such a showing. The Social Democrats had taken gloomy pre-election forecasts seriously enough to cast about for new gimmicks in a country where social reform seems to have gone about as far as it can go, and taxes about as high (in addition to income taxes averaging 30%, Swedes pay a painful 11% sales tax on all retail purchases). Last week Economics Minister Krister Wickman announced the Cabinet's intention to begin putting the state's huge pension funds in northern industries, a move that will give the government a considerably larger stake in Swedish industry than the 5% it now controls.

No Issue. Wickman, 44, is one of two leading candidates to succeed wily Prime Minister Tage Erlander, 67, if he makes good his promise to retire next year. The other is brash Education Minister Olof Palme, 41, who stirred up a storm last winter when he marched in a torchlight parade with North Viet Nam's Ambassador to Moscow to protest the U.S. bombing. Like Palme, most Swedes oppose Washington's Viet Nam policy. Sweden's own foreign policy, however, was never an issue in the campaign. After all, Sweden's traditional neutrality has kept it out of war for 154 years.

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