My 14 Years in Swedish Political Life

Introduction

There are two really strong reasons for opening up participation in   political life for people with disabilities. The first is that a truly democratic society must recognise diversity and accept the different requirements for making political involvement a possibility for all. It is a given that people with disabilities are part of any population in the world and therefore all nations striving towards democracy must develop an active policy with concrete measures to make it possible for people with disabilities to take an active part in political life. The second reason is simply that it is not possible to realise the internationally recognised goal of disability policy - full participation and equality - without making it possible for people with disabilities to be involved in the political life of their country. It is against this background we will welcome all new initiatives leading towards increased accessibility and real participation by people with disabilities in the political process.  

Background

Before I make an attempt to formulate some experiences, gained during my time as an elected politician in Sweden, I want to give you some background information, which hopefully will help you to understand my role and function as a politician.

I lost my sight as a boy and I have my roots   in the Swedish movement of people with disabilities. For a long time I served as the president of the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired. From 1977 I held the position as chairperson of the Central Committee of Organisations of disabled people in Sweden (HCK), a fairly influential organisation with approximately 400,000 members.

In 1980 HCK, together with other organisations such as trade unions, pensioners' organisations etc., got involved in a major political campaign against the ongoing cuts in public spending on social services. I was asked to chair the group leading this campaign. Our work attracted a good deal of attention and, partly because of this, I was asked to accept to run for a seat in Parliament for the Social Democrats (the Swedish labour party), to which I belong. Our party won the elections in 1982 and I    got my seat in Parliament, which had never had a blind member before.

I managed to defend my seat in Parliament through four subsequent   general elections and left Parliament in 1996, in the middle of an election period. My reason for doing this was that I had accepted the position as UN Special Rapporteur on Disability in 1994 and I found that this function took so much time for me that I was unable to do a decent job in Parliament at the same time.

In 1985 Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, asked me to join his government and gave me the responsibility for social services and family affairs. I kept this post up to 1991, when our party lost the election. After a short time out of office, I returned to my seat as a member of Parliament.

Campaigning for a seat

In our country people were not used to meeting a political candidate with a disability. However, when I accepted to run for a seat in parliament, I also had to accept to do the same kind and amount of campaigning as other candidates. This meant that I took part in all sorts of meetings, street discussions, visits to work places etc. Especially during my first campaign in 1982 I often noticed reactions, which I believe had to do with my blindness. The reactions were a kind of mixture of sympathy, cautiousness, curiosity and reservation. As I gained experience, I improved my performance, but I must also confess that these open air meetings and confrontations were never my best discipline.

From a disability point of view, the fact that people met a blind person in this role was obviously a good thing. A "disability component" more or less automatically became part of my message, even if I spoke about other things. At meetings, which I considered as more successful, people "got used   to me" and the discussions became more relaxed and free from special regards. Participants and listeners found out that people with disabilities have views and experiences of other dimensions of life, not just on disability matters. Naturally, I also got more questions on disability matters than other candidates.

My time in parliament

As I pointed out before, I was the first blind member of the Swedish Parliament. From the very beginning of my work as an M.P., I found that the responsible people for serving the members were quite determined to find practical solutions for me. There were many questions from the administrators both of the parliament and the party office. How could the enormous flow of printed information be made accessible for me? This was a few years before the era of personal computers and special equipment for blind people to make the information flow accessible. Therefore other forms of services had to be found. The result was that the parliament established extensive support services, amounting to almost two full-time positions as secretaries. The parliament also bought a scanning machine, which was in its initial stage of development. It took two people to carry it from one room to another. I also got a braille computer.

With this secretarial assistance and technical equipment I could manage quite well after a few months of looking for efficient combinations and working methods.

It turned out that I could manage most of the routines in the chamber. One exception was, however, the different lights   signalling to the member who is speaking, when his time is out. This once gave the speaker of the house serious problems. I was in the middle of a heated discussion with another member and I had totally forgotten about time restrictions. When my time was up and I got the red light, which I couldn't see, the speaker did not find a nice way to cut me off. He waited for a long time and was clearly embarrassed by the situation. Unaware of what was happening, I just went on speaking. Finally, the speaker lost his patience and broke me off very rudely, which was not a natural thing for him to do. Afterwards he came to me and apologised and we could both laugh at the incident. Later on we found a way, through which he could warn me, when my speaking time was approaching its end. He simply knocked discretely on the table with his gavel. I am not certain, but I think he started to use this method to warn other members as well.

During my time in parliament I served as a member of the Commission for social affairs. We were seven representatives of my party and divided issues between us. I had a mixture of matters as my responsibility, among them disability. It is important to notice, that disability was just one of a number of issues that I worked with. One other area, which interested me a lot was family policy and child care. However, with my background in the movement of people with disabilities, many of the personal initiatives I took in parliament had to do with disability. My links with the movement and with other interest groupings   made me one of the most diligent members of parliament when it came to personal proposals and initiatives.  

When I came back to parliament after my six years as a cabinet minister, I had so much more political experience, In addition, the whole information flow in parliament had been computerised, which meant a revolution in access to me. With some extra equipment for braille and synthetic speech I could manage most of the information on my own. The result was that I needed very little extra support and could manage with the same amount of secreterial service offered to any member

My time in government

As a government minister   I was surrounded by so much staff that it was more or less a question of getting organised in a different way, to make things work. Among other things I introduced a system, where staff members came to my room and made personal presentations, instead of sending me loads of written material. This was a practical way of getting access for me, but I soon learnt that it was also much appreciated by staff members, as they got personal contact and direct communication with the minister.

As a minister I had a rather broad and growing portfolio. The full title of my office was: Minister for Social Services and Family Affairs. It included child care, parent insurance, foster care, adoptions, services for people with disabilities and the elderly, alcohol policies and drug abuse. I make this long list to illustrate that I was a minister with a regular portfolio and not a special minister for disability matters.

I enjoy thinking back on my time in the government. I learnt a lot and I had good relations with my fellow ministers. I must admit, however, that some of them were now and then tempted to refer disability matters to me, even if these matters clearly belonged to their own responsibility. If I could, I gave them advice, but most of the time I sent the matter back to them to act upon.

One interesting relation was the one between me and my former colleagues and friends in the movement of people with disabilities. They naturally had high expectations on me to work especially hard to improve the situation of persons with disabilities. I felt now and then that they were disappointed in me, as I failed to realise some of their initiatives and proposals. This was particularly noticeable around 1990, as our country was on the way into a deep recession. In the elections in 1991 our government had a difficult time and I personally found it particularly frustrating that some major improvements in disability legislation, which I had prepared, were taken over in the election campaigning by the liberals, while we in the social democratic government were mainly thinking of sustaining and protecting the strength of the national economy. This was the general approach by the government and it probably contributed significantly to our loss of the elections.

Some general conclusions

First of all I think it is important to be involved in politics on an equal basis with others. If we want our party to support us as candidates for   elected   positions, we must try to take on the same kind of responsibility for the general programme of the party as other candidates, in other words not limiting our role to being a special representative for disability issues. With our experience as disabled persons we will strengthen the disability dimension anyway.

A different but important point is that the party and the responsible authority must create fair conditions for us to function. This is important from the very beginning when we accept to run as candidates, and, of course, when we take up positions as elected members of an assembly, a council or the national parliament.

Many people with disabilities, who in future want to be involved in political work, will have their roots in the movement of people with disabilities. It is very important to develop good relations with the movement, with mutual respect for the different roles played by you as a politician and the movement constantly advocating for better conditions. With good relations there are so many things you can do, even if you will not be in a position to satisfy all their requests.  

Concrete steps called for

Finally, much increased participation in political decision-making is necessary, if we are ever to reach the goal of full participation in society. There are many concrete things that can and must be done to open up the possibilities. A few years ago the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), together with election authorities and disability organisations in a number of countries, carried out a successful research and development programme in the area of election access. The project revealed many serious problems both in election legislation and in the practical exercise of voting rights. As a result of the project, IFES has published a report with many valuable recommendations to improve access to the voting procedures, including physical access    to polling stations and information access both from political parties and the election authorities. There are also recommendations on how to protect the secrecy of voting and how to provide voting assistance without violating the personal integrity of the person voting.

I would very much like to see these recommendations generally implemented around the world, and I also hope that these recommendations will be included in the new UN convention protecting the human rights of persons with disabilities.

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