The Brown Wizard wrote: ↑Mon Dec 21, 2020 7:34 am
You guys welcomed 7 plane loads of infectious englishmen into Sweden today.
And now we wait....
Closed the border today. Both against the UK and Denmark.
It’s a bit complicated, because the Swedish constitution only allows the government to declare a state of emergency in times of war. Thus things like this have to go through parliament, which means even though the government declared their intent to close the border, they could not get it done till the next day.
They are suggesting a change in the constitution, but that takes a two thirds majority in parliament twice, with a general election held between the two votes, so we just have to live with it for now. Parliament will vote on a set of special pandemic laws next year though, that will grant the government a bit more power to make quick decisions, but yeah... The next general election is on 2022 and only some time after that can we complete the changes to the constitution. Well, granted that parliament passes the reform suggestions both times with the necessary majority.
I mean, a lot of Americans think of Sweden as some sort of big government socialist place, but we’re pretty libertarian in many ways. The government is not all that powerful. Parliament has more power, but they also cannot override the municipalities that have a rather strong right of self governance. And healthcare is run by the counties, not the government. A lot of legislation that is being pushed through in centralist countries like France would be unconstitutional here.