In his first Christmas address to the nation, Sweden’s head of government, Ulf Kristersson, has predicted a bleak outlook for 2023, warning of a «very serious» economic crisis and major citizen security problems.
«The recovery that the whole world was longing for after the pandemic will abate has been interrupted. Growth will slow down or will be negative, unemployment will rise,» predicted Wednesday the prime minister, who took office in October with the support of the Swedish far right.
Kristersson continued with his worst predictions, insisting not only on the economic side – the coming years could be the toughest since the crisis of the 1990s – but also on the threats to Swedish public security, such as the war in Ukraine, the gang problem and the energy crisis.
«We need to take steps towards a much broader defense of the whole society,» said Kristersson, who appealed to the civic duty of citizens. «Although Sweden is seen abroad as a peaceful country, in reality no other state in the European Union has our level of armed violence,» he said.
In this sense, he denounced that most of the victims are young people of immigrant origin who belong to criminal gangs, thus repeating one of the mantras that has caused an increase in popularity in the polls of the far-right Sweden Democrats.
He has therefore turned to his compatriots to try to change course, either by saving energy, or by reminding parents of the responsibility they have towards their children, or to students regarding the situation in schools, without forgetting the commitment that every Swede has to the country.
The new Swedish Prime Minister has blamed this drift on the eight years of «political paralysis» of the previous Social Democratic governments and has promised «a paradigm shift» to leave behind those times of «weak» power.
Thus, he assured that Sweden now has a «decisive government» with the sum of the four parties – Moderates, Christian Democrats, Liberals and Democrats – who «put aside their differences of opinion» for the good of the country, according to the Swedish business daily ‘Dagens Industri’.
The problem of public safety to which Kristersson refers has worsened this year, with more than 378 incidents involving firearms in which 60 people have died and another hundred have been injured, very high figures compared to its neighbors, where there were not even half a dozen deaths for these reasons.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
