Swedish Tsunami scandal goes on

[Gustaf]

After the Swedish government bungled up completely on Swedish rescue efforts to the victims of the tsunami, leaving more than 500 Swedes to die (in a 9 million country, that's a lot, like 5 times 9/11 in terms of casulaties) many questions have been raised about what exactly the responsible people in the government did at the time. One of the major incidents was Lars Danielsson, who is sort of similar to the Chief of Staff, claiming that he had called his counter-part, Hans Dahlgren, at the Foreign Office 3 times on the morning of the catastrophe. Dahlgren denied this and his denial was backed up by cell phone calling lists. Danielsson then seemingly retracted his statement by saying that "I have no grounds on which to question Dahlgren's recollection". In further investigations conducted by the Justice Ombudsman Danielsson, however, BOTH repeated this statement AND stated that HIS recollection was still that he had called 3 times.

Conservative Svenska Dagbladet's editorial asks "Is Danielsson mocking us?" and Social Democrat Aftonbladet calls it the greatest political scandal of the decade. The latter has also run a story about how the government's press secretary rang up and asked their editor how long they were going to run the story.

With 4 months left to the general elections, the Social Democrats badly need to get rid of all these scandals.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

When I first found out (over a year ago now) that the Tsunami had become a political row in Sweden, I thought it was a rather sick joke... after all even if the rescue stuff was c*cked up a bit (and it certainly seems to have been) it's not as though it would have saved many lives to be brutally honest...
Just telling you how strange this looks from another country; mind you, one minor political scandal over here earlier this year involved a senior LibDem M.P, a male prostitute and a lot of human excrement so...

[Gustaf]

When I first found out (over a year ago now) that the Tsunami had become a political row in Sweden, I thought it was a rather sick joke... after all even if the rescue stuff was c*cked up a bit (and it certainly seems to have been) it's not as though it would have saved many lives to be brutally honest...
Just telling you how strange this looks from another country; mind you, one minor political scandal over here earlier this year involved a senior LibDem M.P, a male prostitute and a lot of human excrement so...

It's by and large the attitude of the involved people. The Secretary of State went to the theater after being informed of what had happened, another responsible minister dashed off to the Canary Islands, most senior officials refused to come back to work, and so on. Afterwards, they refused to take any responsibility. Laila Freivalds declared that there was NOTHING wrong with her actions whatsoever, that there had not been a single mistake committed. The Prime Minister stated that he took full responsiblity by...not doing anything at all. It also became clear that government officials had systematically ignored all emergency excercises recommended by their own experts.

Now, of course, it's probably true that we wouldn't have saved a lot of lives. But the feeling of your own represenatives abandoning you is still pretty powerful. And some acts committed by government officials are truly despicable. Swedish refugees reaching Swedish embassies were denied to phone home and tell their relatives tha they were ok, because it was against regulations. A woman bleeding from wounds in her legs was told to stand up because it looked bad to have people lying on the embassy floor. That kind of coldness is pretty typical of Swedish state bureacracy and quite disgusting. When a ceremony was held for the victims here in Sweden Freivalds couldn't attend as originally planned because the relatives threatened to boo at her or boycott.

Now, in this case, the main thing is that a high-ranking person in the government has lied in open hearings to elected representatives and that is pretty bad.