Latest news from Sweden: Rattvisepartiet Socialisterna's election campaign

Wednesday September 04, 2002 16:34

by Finghin - Socialist Party

Here is the latest news from the Swedish election campaign. Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna is the sister party of the Socialist Party.

Greetings from Luleå!

Elections are quite different in Sweden than in Ireland. For example every party have an 'election cottage' in the centre of the town where they just all sit around and hand out the occasional leaflet. It looks like a circus, with all the hacks from the 8 establishment parties all chating with each other etc. No parties do canvassing at election campaign apart from ourselves, at least they learned something from Ireland! Posters are also not too prominent here, but again the Swedish have copied the Irish and plastered the place with posters and stickers.

Today had quite a bit of activity. We were phoned by the council telling us to remove our 'cottage' because it was 'ugly' and too big. We measured it and is was in fact smaller that many of the other parties cottages. So we called the media to protest against this, this was much to the disgust of some people in the Liberal Party and the Centre Party. They called us 'Communists' and said we made up the whole situation. We got quite a bit of media attention by it. We were on the local TV news on 3 channels and will probably be all over tomorrows papers.

Joe Higgins TD was up here for the past few days, he left yesterday. His meeting went well, he talked about the Nice Treaty and the Water Tax campaign as well as his time he has spent in the Council and the Dáil. He also got much attention in the media, an interview he had was broadcast on the radio today and a large article and photo appeared in the newspaper.

The campaign is going well, we are concentrating in the north of the town and are very optimistic in getting a seat. On the day I arrived they passed their target of selling 1000 manifestoes,which is twice as much as they sold 4 years ago at the last election. In the last election we missed out by approx 100 votes.

In the national election. Going by todays polls, it looks like the Social Democrats are losing votes to the Vanster Partiet (left Party) and that the Left parties (Social Democrats and Vanster) are neck and neck with the Right wing parties. It looks like the Greens might be in the balance of power or the Social Democrats will enter into coalition with one ot the Right wing parties.

Not being able to speak Swedish is not a big problem,most people seem to be able to speak English and are not offended if you speak it to them. I have to get up at 5am to canvass at a hospital tomorrow! I'll try to keep you all updated as the campaign goes on.

Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (Socialist Justice Party) are the Swedish section of the Committee for a Workers' International, the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated.

For more information on our international organisation go to www.worldsocialist-cwi.org
The website of Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna is www.socialisterna.org
Swedish news website's coverege of Joe Higgins' visit www.nsd.se/index.php?artikel=59232