Samråd my a–! My first rant post :)

Samråd is consultation in Swedish. Good to know if you want to understand the headline.

Maybe I should warn you. This is a rant post. Feel free not to read it.

Sweden is a democracy. At least our politicians says so. I think our constitution also says so. But then we have something called Local self-Government. That means our muncipality can decide in local issues without taking it to the Government. But that doesn’t mean that our local politicians can decide things without asking the voters in the muncipality.

When the politicians decides to bild a big f-ing road through unique nature that will be forever destroyed and increase pollution a lot they are obligated by law to ask the citizens what they think about it.

That’s a part of our democracy or at least what should be democracy.

I guess you already figured out what I’m gonna write next…

Democracy my a–!

Our muncipality people invited the citizens to a meeting for consultation about the new road that they wanna build.

The invite said – come and say what you think, we want to know your opinion.

That turned out not to be true. When people started to ask questions they just answered -no questions now please, just leave your opionion on which alternative you think it’s best to build. The alternative not to build the road didn’t exist as an alternative.

When people tried to bring up the climate changes question they didn’t want to answer at all. It wasn’t on their table they said.

Sorry folks, but climate changes issues are on everyone’s table. But I guess you know that already. They pretended not to know that.

When I asked if the info papers were available on the internet, they answered – they will be after we have compiled the opionions that you have until Sept 6 to send to us.

I then asked – but how can I leave my opionion when I don’t have the information I should base my opinion on? They didn’t answer that.

I took photos of the information and when I did that another info person said, you don’t have to do that. This information will be on the internet tomorrow. I heard differently from your colleague, I said. Then I asked again, will this information be available. Well, not exactly this information….the person answered.

You are all smart people, what did I do?
Of course I continued to take photos of the info! I’m weird, but not stupid. I know when people try to tell me the untruth 🙂

Ok, they did do something good though. They told us about the fantastic road through the nature. It would cost about a hunderty billion to build, because the conditions to build a big road turned out not to be that great! They also said they didn’t have all that money yet. You people hear what’s wrong here don’t you?

If a road that not only destroy nature and increase pollution but also cost a fortune, which you don’t have, and will be hard to build at all, you shall not build it! How hard can that be to understand. The warning signs are all over this project.

I left the meeting realizing (again) that our local muncipality politicians do not practice democracy as they should. They have already decided to destroy nature, increase pollution and also decrease the attractive parts of our municipality without having any intension what so ever of asking the citizens what they think.

Oh, you might wonder, were the politicians, that wants to build the road, there? I think you know the answer……Noooooooooo! Not one bit of yes-to-road-politician turned up at the meeting.

Sweden may be a democracy, but not in the area where I live.

Fortunately, I think we still have freedom of speech, so I think I can write this rant post without big bad consequences. I’m grateful for living in Sweden that way. I can’t imaging how to live without freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech also means that those who think the big road is a great idea have the right to think so. But our local politicians still have the obligations to ask the citizens in this matter and they don’t do that. That is not the same as freedom of speech and the right to have different opionions.

Now I’m done with my rant. I hope you didn’t fall asleep during the reading. It’s my fist rant in English, so please forgive me if I didn’t do it right 🙂

Anna