Sweden's Next PM Starts Work After Election Victory

Reinfeldt, 41, led the four-party Alliance for Sweden to election victory on Sunday, just three years after being elected head of his conservative Moderate Party and uniting the notoriously divided bloc. The Alliance won 48.1 percent of votes, edging out the Social Democrats and their allies, the Left and the Greens, who garnered 46.2 percent.

The new government, which is scheduled to formally take power on October 5, has vowed to improve the Swedish model, reiterating throughout the campaign that it would pour more money into the welfare system than the Social Democrats, who as the founders of the welfare state are seen as its caretakers.

"To be elected in Sweden you have to defend the welfare state," Johnny Munkhammar at the Timbro think tank told reporters.

With unemployment one of the main themes of the election campaign, the Alliance has focused on getting Swedes back into the job market and creating more jobs, but has said it intends to reduce unemployment and sickness benefits to combat abuses to the system. Official figures put unemployment at 5.7 percent in August, but Reinfeldt has said the real unemployment rate is 20 percent due to the welfare economy.

"They have pledged to protect the welfare society, (emphasizing) schools, health care, and child and elderly care. There won't be any cutbacks," Dagens Nyheter editorialist Henrik Brors said.

The coalition was also expected to sell state holdings in listed companies amounting to some 50 billion kronor ($6.88 billion, 5.44 billion euros) per year, and deregulate some state-run monopolies, such as Apoteket, which runs the country's pharmacies.

Rapid handover

Reinfeldt and the three other Alliance party leaders from the Liberals, Center and Christian Democrats were to sit down in thorny talks over the next few days to decide on the composition of the new cabinet.

None of the party leaders have any experience in government, with the last center-right government dating back to 1991-1994 under the leadership of Carl Bildt. Reinfeldt's Moderate Party, by far the largest of the four parties with 26.1 percent of votes, is expected to take the lion's share of cabinet posts.

Reinfeldt is expected to present his government's program and his cabinet to parliament on October 6.

Outgoing Prime Minister Göran Persson, who at 57 served as head of government for 10 years, was expected to submit his government's resignation to the speaker of parliament on Monday, though he will remain in a caretaker role until the center-right takes power.

Referendum on Persson

Persson's Social Democrats have dominated Swedish politics in the postwar period, governing the country for 65 of the past 74 years. But while the party remained the biggest political formation in the country after the election, its 35.3 percent score was one of its weakest ever registered.

Political commentators placed the blame for the poor showing entirely on Persson, saying voters were turned off by his power-hungry ways. His refusal to agree to a left-wing coalition with parliamentary allies the Left and the Greens also presented a splintered front to voters.

"Never before in modern Swedish history has the center-right managed to win an election when there hasn't been an economic crisis in the country," the country's largest daily Dagens Nyheter noted. "Persson was far too dominant on the government side and came to personify much of what the center-right wanted to highlight in the election campaign: that our democracy would be well-served by a change of power."

Leading political commentator Barbro Hedvall said meanwhile that the election was a "referendum on Göran Persson."