RE: More of the same16 Mar 2021 16:39
Take the case Kallak: an iron ore mine that may give Jokkmokk a couple of hundred jobs but risks pulling away the carpet for two Sami villages and a world heritage site. The officials disagree: the mining authority Bergsstaten says yes and the county administrative board says no. Thus, the matter is up to the government to decide.
But Kallak has been untouched by the government for almost three years. As if they thought it would disappear if they just closed their eyes hard enough.
Instead of uncomfortable but unavoidable political decisions, we get another investigation - and a rhetorical twist that is starting to become awkwardly transparent for those who have been following the issues for a while. A Minister of Trade and Industry can butter at the conferences of the mining industry, while the Minister of Culture of the same government spends the night in the activists' activist camp.
This makes the government look like a potty. Like the husband of a father who does not want to quarrel with his wife or his mother and therefore acts so wisely and indecisively that both eventually turn against him.
Perhaps the Swedish identity itself is at stake. Are we the country that built its welfare from the forest, the ore and hydropower, or the country that loves our high mountains and green meadows so much that we inscribed them in our national anthem? The Swedish instinct is to want to be both, but one and the same place can not be both Änglamark and Europe's leading supplier of innovation-critical materials