Populist Pawns in Place as Powerplayers

Again, we have got some populist powerplayers in charge of our country. This is normal. It is due to a deficient recruitment system which is lacking approriately structured selection criteria in order to identify the right person for the right job. And this is a serious error in emerging Europe. A continent with the ambition to play a leading role in spreading the idea of a good balance between freedom and welfare across the globe.

We should not oversimplify such difficult issues. We should be honest. Europe needs its well educated and informed elite. But Europe in some respect surprisingly antielitist when it comes to accepting progress on the arena of competence integration. Let's see what happens now. The Swedish Social Democrats have recently been replaced by a liberal coalition led by Fredrik Reinfeldt. I met him in Waxholm a sunny Saturday in the Stockholm archipelago where he had a wide audience. Swedes were tired of socialist mismanagement and failure to target their action towards the real cause of the problem that they were hiding, the high unemployment rate at the point of a strong economy. A system failure due to rigidity not too difficult to diagnose. Why this fatigue of the old government? Natural causes? Instead a young vibrant group around Reinfeldt seemed able to address the real concerns of people, to overcome the collectivist chimera (a formula for remedy of any ailment) and focus on the individual. And they won the game, despite considerable inexperience in governance. We'll see how it works. The initial enthusiasm was cooled off quickly once he faced reality: the disclosure of the defects of Reinfeldt's chosen ministers. Actually this was to be expected. Although his ideas are strong and resonant they may prove more difficult to actually make the program of the Alliance come to life within the scope of only a four year mandate. That is their key problem, but it is only one among many.

Who can listen? That is the key. The new Alliance was admirably adaptive running for the election. But it takes another kind of gut to lead the country. You have to have the capacities both as an attentive conductor listening to the whole orchestra and an analytic doctor skilled in diagnose and surgery. To combine both analytic and integrative skills with a populist antielitism based on fear does not provide the best recipe for successful government. We will see.