A Vote for Instability

Palme's last hurrah?

After nearly a half-century of solid government, the placid, proudly enlightened Swedes are about as eager for political instability as they are for, well, chaperoned dating. Last week, however, the country was preparing for a long winter of insecure government, following an election that reconfirmed the nonsocialist parliamentary majority by a single seat and that may have ended the career of Sweden's most dynamic politician, former Social Democratic Premier Olof Palme.

The election was so close it took three days of counting the 5,322,688 votes to determine who had won. Finally, on the strength of mailed-in ballots, a grouping of Conservative, Center and Liberal parties emerged with a 5,000-vote margin and 175 seats in the 349-member Riksdag (parliament). The leftist opposition alliance had 174 seats--154 for the Social Democrats, still the country's biggest single party, and 20 for the Communists.

"I see no future for a parliament with such a tiny majority," scoffed Palme, who might have added that his own future appeared to be even more questionable. Ousted from office in 1976 when tax-weary Swedes overturned 44 years of uninterrupted Social Democratic rule, the former Premier has now suffered his second defeat at the polls. Although he insisted he would not step down voluntarily "like a deserter," Palme acknowledged that "my position as party leader is now open for disposal."

For the winners, the problem of forming a government with a single-vote majority was compounded by the fact that the three non-socialist parties are deeply divided on the country's two main political issues: nuclear energy and taxes. The Conservatives support further construction of nuclear reactors, which the Center Party and half of the Liberal Party oppose. All three parties want to reduce Sweden's exorbitant income taxes, but cannot agree on how else to pay for Western Europe's most expensive welfare state. The most likely prospect seemed to be either another feeble minority government led by Premier Ola Ullsten, head of the Liberal Party, or a wobbly Center-Liberal coalition. But the betting was that neither could last much beyond next March, when a scheduled national referendum on nuclear energy might break the country's political stalemate wide open again.

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