In the country that welcomed everyone indiscriminately, from Pakistan as from Syria, from Nigeria as from Somalia, no one feels safe.
“It is getting worse and worse in terms of violent crime, it worries people,” Torsten Elofsson, the former Malmö police chief candidate with the center-right Christian Democrats, says to Financial Times. Once there were only Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Now you see it in small towns. It’s getting closer and closer to where most people live. Swedes who want their families to be safe are running out of places to hide and move, unless they decide to leave Sweden behind, like some are already doing. They have had enough of living in a once ideal country that recorded 342 shootings in a year – almost one a day.
Related – Swedish PM resigns as right-wing parties win vote
Magdalena Andersson’s centre-left bloc lost narrowly to a bloc of right-wing parties, 176 seats to 173, with 99% of the votes counted.
Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson is now expected to form a government.
His right-wing grouping includes the Sweden Democrats, a far-right party that has campaigned against rising gang shootings.
It is a huge blow to Andersson’s Social Democrats, which gained votes compared to the last election, and remain Sweden’s largest party.
