Brännvin
10-21-2009, 05:35 AM
The nationalist party Sweden Democrats had their congress last Friday (16th) in Ljungbyhed, Skåne in the very southern part of Sweden. The party leader Jimmie Åkesson was re-elected.
Jimmie Åkesson was optimistic when he held his speech:
- One has to admit that the late summer and the autumn have been good for us in several ways. Not least, we have seen how we have reached new levels in opinion polls -new reckord recently with 5.9 percent - and we have been mentioned as the party that can balance the blocks. This is exactly the situation that we have hoped for.
The speech is available in Swedish at the homepage of Sweden democrats.
Sweden democrats has since its origins been a party that has profiled itself as nationalistic and anti-immigrant. The extreme profile in the early years has now been washed away and the party works hard to become a ´normal´ party.
This process towards a mainstream party could be seen also in the first two days of the three-day party congress. The party decided to support the Social democrats proposal to raise the unemployment benefit fund to 80 percent. In their rhetoric, they also flirt with classical social democratic voters. They claim to support the Swedish welfare model and want to protect Sweden from labour immigration to avoid wage dumping.
At the same time, Sweden Democrats does not want to raise taxes as the ´socialist cartel´ says Sven-Olof Sällström, one of the party delegates in a speech at the congress. The party thereby put itself in the middle of the two blocks.
Another policy that was accepted was to abolish the ´instegsjobb´ policy of the current centre-right government. This means that immigrants are helped to get a job in their first years through state funding of their salaries.
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Mats Öhlén
Jimmie Åkesson was optimistic when he held his speech:
- One has to admit that the late summer and the autumn have been good for us in several ways. Not least, we have seen how we have reached new levels in opinion polls -new reckord recently with 5.9 percent - and we have been mentioned as the party that can balance the blocks. This is exactly the situation that we have hoped for.
The speech is available in Swedish at the homepage of Sweden democrats.
Sweden democrats has since its origins been a party that has profiled itself as nationalistic and anti-immigrant. The extreme profile in the early years has now been washed away and the party works hard to become a ´normal´ party.
This process towards a mainstream party could be seen also in the first two days of the three-day party congress. The party decided to support the Social democrats proposal to raise the unemployment benefit fund to 80 percent. In their rhetoric, they also flirt with classical social democratic voters. They claim to support the Swedish welfare model and want to protect Sweden from labour immigration to avoid wage dumping.
At the same time, Sweden Democrats does not want to raise taxes as the ´socialist cartel´ says Sven-Olof Sällström, one of the party delegates in a speech at the congress. The party thereby put itself in the middle of the two blocks.
Another policy that was accepted was to abolish the ´instegsjobb´ policy of the current centre-right government. This means that immigrants are helped to get a job in their first years through state funding of their salaries.
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Mats Öhlén