The vote comes at a sensitive time in negotiations with Turkey, which has torpedoed Sweden and Finland’s hopes for quick NATO membership.
The Swedish government looks set to survive the vote, which will be held later today motion of censure against Justice Minister Morgan Johanssonwith the help of an MP, who has asked for guarantees that Sweden will support the Kurds in Northern Syria despite the objections of Turkey, which opposes the process of Sweden’s accession to NATO.
THE Independent Member of Parliament Amineh Kakabaveh, Iran, which is of Kurdish origin, has said it will abstain from voting on a motion of censure filed by the center-right opposition against Justice Minister Morgan Johansson over the rise in gang crime.
Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson has stated that her Social Democrat minority government will resign if the minister is voted against.
“I have come to the conclusion that I will abstain from voting,” Kakabaveh told SVT.
Without Kakabaveh’s vote, the motion of censure, which will be put to a vote later today, is expected to be voted in favor by only 174 members of parliament, while to overthrow the minister and therefore the government requires 175 votes.
The vote comes at a sensitive time in negotiations with Turkey, which has torpedoed Sweden and Finland’s hopes of speedy NATO membership and boosting their security in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey accuses the two Nordic countries of offering shelter to individuals linked to organizations it considers terrorist.
Kakabaveh, a former Kurdish Peshmerga fighter, told Reuters on Friday that she would help the government if the latter confirmed that “we support the Kurds and the people from these organizations arriving in Sweden are not terrorists.”
Kakabaveh backed Anderson in November, when the country’s first female prime minister was temporarily forced to step down after just one day as prime minister.
Anderson then promised that Sweden would strengthen its co-operation with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Ankara considers part of the PKK. Sweden was the first after Turkey to classify the PKK as a terrorist organization since 1984.
Sweden disagrees that the PYD or several other Kurdish organizations belong to the PKK.
Anderson’s Social Democrats at the time called it “unacceptable” for the party’s supporters to be considered terrorists.
“The agreement, which has been in force since November last year, remains in force,” Tobias Bodin told the TT news agency today.
The Social Democrats did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sweden is set to hold parliamentary elections in September.
