November 22, 2001	Thursday	Ramazan 6, 1422

COPENHAGEN, Nov 21: A historic swing to the right in Denmark’s election stirred unease in Scandinavia on Wednesday that a new centre-right government would be hostage to a vitriolically anti-immigrant far right.

The Liberal Party of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 48, eclipsed the Social Democrats of outgoing Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in Tuesday’s election for the first time since the 1920s.

But the new prime minister, dealing a fresh blow to Scandinavia’s once-mighty social democrats, will have to depend on support from the anti-foreigner Danish People’s Party (DPP).

DPP leader Pia Kjaersgaard has exploited fears about Muslims since the suicide hijack attacks on the United States on September 11. She has urged far stricter limits on immigration and once said she crossed the street when she met a Muslim.

“It’s clear I’m worried. We now see a centre-right government which will be forced to prop itself up with anti-foreigner ideas,” Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister Goran Persson said.

Nyrup Rasmussen, no relation of his successor, formally handed his resignation to Queen Margrethe on Wednesday. And Fogh Rasmussen, a former economy minister, promised stricter immigration laws, a cap on taxation and improved hospitals.

Norwegian centrist Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said that some aspects of the Danish campaign had “caused concern”. But he said: “I hope and believe that Denmark will still follow a humane refugee and immigration policy.

GOODNIGHT DENMARK: In Sweden, the daily Dagens Nyheter was blunt. “It is difficult to point to any winner in the Danish election but the losers are easier to identify, they are all those with dark skin, humanism and decency. Goodnight Denmark,” it said.

Danish newspapers hailed the landslide as showing that Danes were fed up after nine years under Nyrup Rasmussen, the European Union’s longest serving prime minister. “It is clear that a basic desire for change played a role,” Politiken said.

Fogh Rasmussen’s centre-right bloc won 98 seats in parliament against 77 for Nyrup Rasmussen’s bloc.

Fogh Rasmussen’s Liberals have 56 seats and are likely to form a minority coalition with the 16 seats of the Conservatives and the four of the Christian People’s Party.

It will depend on informal support from the 22-strong DPP, but Fogh Rasmussen has ruled out giving the DPP any seats in a cabinet. Thus Denmark will not go as far right as Austria, where the Freedom Party of Joerg Haider has seats in government.

Fogh Rasmussen’s calls for tighter limits for asylum seekers and refugees, widely viewed as welfare spongers by right-wingers, became the dominant campaign issue in a nation where the main parties broadly agree on economic policy.

Fogh Rasmussen said he would try to seek the broadest possible cooperation in parliament, in an olive branch to the Social Democrats.

The defeat was a stinging rebuff to Nyrup Rasmussen, 58, who called the snap election in a gamble that voters would unite behind his nine-year leadership after the September 11 attacks.

Denmark is the second Scandinavian nation after Norway to ditch a Social Democratic government this year in favour of the centre-right. Norway’s Labour Party, blamed for failing to update a womb-to-tomb welfare state, lost a September election.

Fewer than five percent of Denmark’s 5.3 million inhabitants are foreigners, fewer than in many European nations. Paradoxically, Denmark is the top world donor to developing nations.—Reuters