Whirlwind

From Sydsvenskan (the Southern Swedish Daily),
Wednesday, September 17, 2003Page Two, Per T Ohlsson

AFTER THE WHIRLWIND

September 12, 2003

She appeared like a refreshing whirlwind. But suddenly she was gone, deprived of life in the midst of her democratic endeavors. And everything grew still, deafeningly still.

Anna Lindh, the foreign minister of Sweden since 1998, was subjected to a knife attack last Wednesday at NK, in Stockholm. She was taken to Karolinska Hospital. There, on the operating table for thirteen hours, she fought her last battle. But it was not possible to save her life. Anna Lindh passed away at 5:29 a.m. on Thursday. She was 46 years old.

Sweden, divided into two camps leading up to the referendum on the euro, unites. Our thoughts go to the family of Anna Lindh.

A human being, Anna Lindh, has been murdered. But the assassination was aimed at us all in the sense that the victim was a leading representative of our most valuable common asset: democracy. Yesterday’s news, reported by a shaken but controlled Göran Persson after deliberations with other party leaders, was therefore the only right thing, the only sensible thing:

All the campaigning has been canceled, but the referendum on the euro will be carried out as planned on Sunday. The democratic process cannot – must not—be impeded by violence. This matters more than the risk of speculations later about the meaning of the murder for the outcome of the referendum.

There is a historical precedent. Not the election of 1973, when the hostage drama at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm and the illness and death of King Gustav VI Adolf led to stopping the election campaign. At that time there were no serious plans to cancel the actual election. In 1940 the coalition government decided to postpone the election in the second chamber of parliament on account of the foreign security situation. Denmark and Norway were occupied by Nazi Germany and Finland had just barely managed to rescue its independence in the Winter War against the Soviet Union. But the election was carried out. Despite extensive conscriptions, restrictions, and communications problems, participation in the election mounted to 70.3 percent, the next highest since the breakthrough of universal and equal suffrage twenty years earlier. When darkness sank down over the Nordic countries, the flame of democracy went on shining in Sweden. Against this background (not widely known among Swedes today), a proud and powerful tradition is being confirmed as we go to the polls on Sunday.

The murder of Anna Lindh is surrounded by ironies of fate. First, pure coincidence: She died on the 11th of September, on the second anniversary of the terror attacks against the U.S. that demonstrated to the whole world the vulnerability of the open society. Then a cruel connection: More than perhaps any other top Swedish politician, Anna Lindh represented the openness and accessibility that distinguishes Swedish democracy. She tried to keep as little distance as possible between her and the people she represented, and she moved about freely among other people, unconcerned.

She was cut down while on a personal visit to a department store which she had made unescorted by a bodyguard. Comparisons with Olof Palme and the tragic winter evening of 1986 are inevitable: Palme was shot when he and his wife, completely unguarded, were on their way home from a movie in central Stockholm. The perpetrator disappeared from the scene of the crime, exactly as on last Wednesday,.

Discussion of the judgements of the security police are already in full swing. And it is certainly remarkable—perhaps an outright expression of police incompetence—that one of the country’s most exposed politicians was left unguarded in the midst of the final phase of an intense, emotionally charged election campaign. The questions from 1986 need to be posed once more—and this time they must get clearer answers:

Where is the democratically acceptable balance point between openness and security? Where do we draw the line between being accessible and being clueless? How much “ordinariness” should we ask of persons who by virtue of their public positions are anything but ordinary?

Assistance and Migration Minister Jan O. Karlsson, who is competent but controversial, has taken over Anna Lindh’s work assignments in the government. This is a temporary solution. But it will not be easy for Göran Persson to find a permanent successor to Anna Lindh. She was the government’s brightest shining star. This is evident not only from the latest day’s Swedish reactions but also from dismayed comments from her foreign colleagues in politics. In yesterday’s harvest of international condolences there is one characteristic detail: U.S. foreign minister Colin Powell—sometimes Anna Lindh’s partner, sometimes her opponent—calls her “Anna,” short and sweet, in pointing out her “unique contribution to international diplomacy and transatlantic relations.”

This was Anna Lindh’s great gift: the ability to combine the political and the personal, the correct with what was unprestigious. Anna Lindh’s pace was dizzying, her capacity for work enormous. She demonstrated this during her last days of life: the EU meeting in Italy, the TV debate on the euro, a public meeting with Greece’s foreign minister. And in between came all the routine, everyday duties. Paperwork at the Foreign Ministry, planning for the final phase of the Yes campaign’s. Meeting with her family. And then, in a rare moment of free time, an ill-fated visit to NK.

The person Anna Lindh had such warmth and radiance that it is easy to forget that she also had an icy competence and efficiency as foreign minister, one of the best that Sweden has had. The EU membership gave her opportunities that she utilized with impressive skill, not least during the Swedish presidency of the Union the first six months of 2001. Then she made an important, some say crucial contribution to prevent yet another catastrophe in the Balkans when violent antagonisms in Macedonia, one of Yugoslavia’s earlier republics, threatened to develop into a real civil war. She helped Prime Minister Göran Persson persuade other EU leaders of the necessity of designating 2004 as a deadline for the expansion of the EU. Lindh, reared politically in the radical environment of the Young Social Democrats, often struck a sharper tone, inspired more by Palme than by Göran Persson. One example was her harsh criticism against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, another her comments against President George W. Bush’s plans for an American missile defense.

But led by a strong conviction, based on the principles of the U.N. charter, she sometimes wound up on a collision course with traditionally party allies. And then she did not retreat. This is what happened during NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, and this is what happened during the American counter-attack against the Taliban and al-Quaida in Afhanistan in the fall of 2001.

More clearly than her EU colleagues, she spoke out plainly about and to Turkey: respect for human rights was a prerequisite for future admission to the EU. She played an important roll in the development of a new Swedish security policy. And leading up to the euro referendum, she was the strongest proponent for the yes side. Well-read and resolute, down-to-earth and receptive.

This was Anna Lindh’s most important contribution to Sweden’s political development: Europeanization and modernization.

Highly gifted and deeply anchored in Social Democracy, Anna Lindh was often mentioned in the speculations about a successor to Göran Persson. How things really stood with her position as “crown princess” is known only in an inner circle. But one thing is clear: she complemented and balanced the prime minister and seemed, unlike some other ministers, to have the confidence of her boss and a relaxed relationship with him. Now, on the threshold of a referendum that can cause complications in European as well as domestic policy, Göran Persson has lost one of his most valuable and entrusted coworkers. It must therefore also must be said today, even if the sorrow over Anna Lindh’s passing dominates the public discourse: Göran Persson, just now Europe’s loneliest head of state, has handled this tragic situation with a resolute dignity reminiscent of his calm, confident performance on the 11th of September.

A human being is dead. But the democracy that she represented lives on. Now on Sunday we are offered a suitable occasion to manifest this. Regardless of whether we say yes or no to the euro.

In this way we honor a significant politician. And so we can feel a lingering breeze from a swirling fresh wind that passed all too quickly through our European welfare state.

-- trans. Verne Moberg