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.
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