Too expensive, overexposed and archaic: Despite the feel-good coverage of Crown Princess Victoria’s upcoming nuptials, opposition to the monarchy in Sweden is growing.
But even opponents admit to having a soft spot for the royals.
“We like the people,” Mona Abou-Jeib Broshammar, who leads Sweden’s Republican Association, said of the royal family. “They don’t do any harm.”
The problem, he said, is “they inherit the power.”
Most of the media is working itself into a frenzy ahead of Saturday’s wedding between Victoria, 32, and 36-year-old luxury gym owner Daniel Westling, with breathless coverage of preparations.
However, opposition to the monarchy is soaring. A recent poll showed the number of Swedes who wanted to abolish the monarchy had more than doubled over the past decade to 28 percent.
And in the past year alone the Republican Association has seen its membership double to more than 6,000.
But this opposition “has nothing to do with the people really,” attorney and abolitionist Peter Althin said in a documentary film on the monarchy, which aired on Swedish public television on Monday.
He even admitted he would be watching Saturday’s wedding.
“Of course I’ll watch. It’s wonderful to see two people who love each other,” he said.
For Broshammar, the swelling anti-monarchy sentiment in Sweden had little to do with the personalities and more to do with the need “to evaluate our democratic alternatives.”
That distinction is clear on the association’s Web site, where calls to abolish the monarchy sit alongside posts voicing concern for the restrictions royal family members have to endure.
One page shows a picture of the bride-to-be next to a picture of a woman in a burqa: More than one comment suggests that in Sweden, the princess is the less free of the two.
“One of these women must, according to the Swedish constitution, ask her father for permission to marry the man she wants,” one poster writes.
Another writes: “One of these women has, according to the Swedish constitution, no freedom of expression.”
According to Swedish succession laws, the heir to the throne cannot marry without the consent of both her father, the king, and the government.
“It’s ridiculous that a princess who has reached the age of majority must ask her daddy to let her marry the man she wants,” Ahlthin said.
Other critics point out that Sweden’s constitution obliges the ruling king or queen to follow the Augsburg Confession within the Evangelical Lutheran Church — or face losing their title and function as head of state.
“The right to freedom of religion is thereby not accorded to the king or queen,” Christer Sturmark, heads of the Swedish Humanist Association, wrote in an opinion piece in the Svenska Dagbladet daily on Monday.
The royal family has no political power in practice, but since it is financed by the tax payers, for some it is an expensive luxury.
According to the head of the king’s military staff Haakan Pettersson, more than 100 million kronor (US$12.5 million) in tax revenue will go toward royal expenses this year.
The cost of Saturday’s wedding has been estimated at about 20 million kronor, half of which will be covered by the state.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS