Anna-Karin Hatt's resignation after only six months as Center Party leader struck like a bomb on Wednesday.
The party is now forced to find a new leader in just one month, until the meeting in November. And next autumn, Sweden is going to the election.
Jonas Hinnfors, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Gothenburg, says that the Center Party is now in the same kind of deadlock as when Hatt's predecessor Muharrem Demirok left the post – a situation where one has actively closed the door to the Sweden Democrats but at the same time does not want to open it wide to the Social Democrats.
Must solve the core problem
There were "enormous expectations" that Hatt would solve that issue, emphasizes Hinnfors.
It's back to square one, he says.
It doesn't seem like they're on their way to opening the door to the right, but rather how will the party be persuaded to accept what it means to close the door to the right. What alternatives are left then?
But to, for example, support the Social Democrats' Magdalena Andersson as a candidate for prime minister is not a message that is made lightly by the party leader.
I think it must be someone who has very strong leadership and dares to say "this is the position that remains for us", says Hinnfors.
"New optimism"
Instead of only focusing on profiling before the election, the party must now put effort and time into finding new candidates and making decisions about a new party leader.
Although the process will be tough, Malena Rosén Sundström, associate professor of political science at Lund University, does not think it's over.
Even if this is a hard blow at the moment, it still feels like the party has been pulled up, in a positive sense, in a new kind of optimism now with Anna-Karin Hatt. Hopefully, they can build on that, she says.
