Sweden's new center-right government got off to a rocky start as two ministers resigned within 10 days of taking office after revelations surfaced about secrets from their past.
The ministers resigned after allegations surfaced that they failed to pay for TV licenses and illegally hired nannies, forcing Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt to learn the bitter lesson that there is nothing tax-burdened Swedes despise more than when the privileged cheat the system.
"If Reinfeldt is lucky, it will stop at this," said Ulf Bjereld, a political science professor at Goteborg University. "But eyes will now be drawn to others close to him who also haven't paid the TV license."
PHOTO: AFP AND AP
Culture Minister Cecilia Stego Chilo, 47, resigned on Monday, a week after Swedish media reported she had skipped paying her TV license fee for 16 years and evaded taxes by paying a nanny under the table.
"Since it will not be possible to clear up the situation within a reasonable time, I no longer see any possibility to ... repair the damage I have caused the government," said Stego Chilo, the former head of the Timbro conservative think tank.
Every household with a TV set is required to pay the annual fee of about 1,500 kronor (US$200), which is the main source of funding for Sweden's public radio and television. Many believe Stego Chilo refused to pay the fee on ideological grounds.
"As culture minister she is politically responsible for public service," said Lena Mellin, a political columnist who writes for the tabloid Aftonbladet.
"That she for 16 years didn't think it was necessary to pay is hard to understand," she said.
Stego Chilo's resignation came just two days after Trade Minister Maria Borelius dropped out of the Cabinet on similar allegations, causing embarrassment for Reinfeldt's four-party coalition, which took power on Oct. 6 and ended 12 years of Social Democratic rule.
Borelius acknowledged that she also had hired a nanny in the 1990s without reporting it to tax authorities or paying the required employment fees.
She made matters worse by saying that she could not afford to hire a nanny legally, when tax records showed she and her husband had a combined income several times that of an average Swedish family.
In addition, tabloids reported that her 6.8 million kronor summer home was owned by a corporation on the island of Jersey, allowing her family to avoid Swedish property taxes.
"I wonder if she has any idea of what life is like in Sweden for a single mother," said Helen Doktare, a Green Party politician in the northern city of Lulea. "Most of us can't even afford to pay [a nanny] under the table."
Experts said it was the first time a Swedish administration had been hit by two resignations so soon after taking office.
Reinfeldt's government was not expected to fall, but its image has been severely tarnished.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS