Anna Lindh's murder has robbed Swedes of a popular politician and reminded them of Olof Palme, writes Derek Scally in Stockholm
Anna Lindh could be seen all around Stockholm yesterday. A day after Sweden's Foreign Minister lost her struggle for life after a knife attack, the attractive blonde politician was still smiling down from posters, calling for Swedes to vote yes to the euro tomorrow.
The referendum is going ahead, but it is in circumstances nobody could have imagined. The death of the country's most popular politician added an unbearable twist to an emotionally charged debate as the rival camps fight for hearts and minds whether to abandon the krona and adopt the euro.
Lindh's death has plunged Sweden into mourning and a period of soul-searching about the nature of their society that will continue long after polls close tomorrow.
It's hard to describe the emotion to be seen on every corner in the city. People cry openly, red-eyed pedestrians walking through the streets with flowers on their way to one of the many makeshift shrines to the politician. The mood is of incredible sadness, pure anger and déjà vu.
It's 17 years since the February evening when Olof Palme left the Grand Cinema in Stockholm with his wife, Lisbet, and headed for a nearby underground station. As usual the prime minister had no bodyguards as he crossed Sveavägen Street; he and his wife were almost at the station when a man stepped out of the dark, shot Palme in the head and fled. Palme died almost instantly.
The chief suspect, Christer Pettersson, was found guilty of the murder mainly on the basis of Lisbet Palme's testimony. He was acquitted on appeal, and the crime remains unsolved, a trauma in the Swedish soul. The unspoken fear is that history will be repeated.
The scene of Palme's assassination is just a short walk from NK, the department store where Lindh was stabbed. Yesterday the simple plaque on the pavement remembering Palme was surrounded by dozens of roses and candles. Pedestrians slowed at the sight. Some stopped to talk.
"I'll never forget that day; it was an incredible shock," said a shopkeeper in the art-supplies store beside the plaque. "People say these things don't happen in Sweden, but it's happened again."
With few firm leads on Lindh's killer and no clear motive, nervous Stockholmers share a suspicion that the attacker may have been mentally disturbed.
Funding shortages mean countless mentally ill people have been released from facilities and sheltered accommodation in the past few years. There were several reports of incidents over the summer. In July a mentally ill man knocked down and killed two people and injured several others while driving a car through Stockholm's old town.
"They are closing facilities for the mentally ill all the time and leaving them on the streets. If we find out a homeless person who was mentally ill did this it will be a real wake-up call that all is not well in Sweden's social system," says Irene Snellmann, a visitor to the Palme memorial.
Swedish newspapers devoted dozens of pages yesterday to the killing and what it means for Sweden's open society, common to all Nordic countries, where you see politicians cycling to work or buying milk in corner shops.
"It could be the end of this unique open society here, where politicians wanted to be able to meet the people who elected them. It was unique, but it looks like the bubble burst," says Dirk Bankamp, a visitor from Frankfurt.
The murder has also put a question mark over how Swedes are seen by themselves and by others. "We are brought up to think we are a different country - many would say one of the best countries - that is safer and has a strong social-security net," says Ingela Hoatson, a Swedish journalist. "Now no one knows what to think."
Lindh's death brought referendum campaigning to a dramatic halt. The yes campaign had lost its figurehead: Lindh, a 46-year-old mother of two, had spent the last weeks criss-crossing the country pushing for acceptance of the euro. The burden became almost too much, according to friends, and she even started to get hate mail.
On August 27th she received an e-mail threatening her and her children and accusing her of being a "power-hungry bitch sitting in the lap of big business". The e-mail came a day after she co-wrote a newspaper article arguing for a yes vote, but it was not passed on to police.
Swedish journalists describe the referendum campaign as uncharacteristically aggressive. No-vote campaigners, led by the Greens and the Left Party, built up a solid lead by pushing the emotional buttons of tradition and the krona. Even the ruling Social Democrats were split by the looming decision.
But Lindh was the government's best weapon, particularly effective with the many sceptical women voters who were more likely to be swayed by a female politician. "She was respected everywhere, that's the key thing about Anna Lindh. Even those who didn't share her political views respected her a lot," says Ingela Hoatson, another journalist.
A widely held assumption was that, beyond the referendum, Lindh would follow Göran Persson as prime minister, becoming the first woman in the post.
"She was very cautious about running for the party leadership; she weighed the benefits and her family obligations. I never heard her give an answer," says Olle Svenning, a columnist with the influential Aftonbladet newspaper.
But Lindh put any future plans out of her head in the last months and threw herself into the campaign, where there was everything to fight for. If voters said no to the euro it would probably be a decade before Swedish politicians would dare ask them again.
Polls yesterday gave a conflicting picture of whether Lindh's death would affect the poll: one survey suggested a 50-50 split, another suggested the number of no voters had increased. Many Swedes, including Persson, had voted long before this week's attack, using their postal ballots.
Seventeen years after Swedish history repeated itself so tragically, Persson yesterday reiterated a promise Lindh made in her speech at Palme's funeral, in 1986. "We will continue your fight to the best of our ability. The fight for peace and international solidarity, the fight for a free and open Sweden," he said, repeating her words. "Our thanks to you is to carry on your message."Sweden's biggest-selling daily paper, Aftonbladet, yesterday devoted 35 pages to Anna Lindh's killing.
"Sweden finds itself in a state of shock like that after the murder of Olof Palme in 1986. Yet again a prominent politician has fallen victim to meaningless violence," it said.
In its editorial the newspaper described the country's mood as one of sorrow beyond words. "This shows again, with brutal clarity, that our country is not immune to incidents of subversive violence.
"The perpetrator isn't known this time either - and neither is the motive for the deed. We are gripped by a feeling of impotence . . . . The hurt, anger and sorrow this September morning are unbearable."
The broadsheet Dagens Nyheter called the killing an attack on
democracy and said it was inconceivable that Lindh had no protection while shopping in central Stockholm three days before the referendum. It referred to "random violent incidents" involving mentally disturbed people earlier this year in Sweden.