Governments are now peddling myths to cover up their own inaction during the first few days of the catastrophe. They are stating that the magnitude of the catastrophe was unknown and, therefore, they did not feel compelled to set up the emergency infrastructure to supply information to distraught relatives. One of the first countries to feel the angry wind is Sweden, where the Foreign Minister attended the theatre on Boxing Day night, with appalling lack of judgement.
Der Spiegel’s article highlights the comparison between government confusion and private sector organisation:
Swedes are fuming. Partly, they are unleashing their rage, horror and sense of utter helplessness in the face of a disaster felt by almost every family, directly or indirectly, in this tightly knit nation of 9 million. But they are also launching some very sharp criticism at a government that failed to absorb the magnitude of the Asian tsunami and took too long to respond. As many as 4,000 Swedes were swept into the tsunami’s watery folds.
An editorial in the mass-circulation Aftonbladet lambasted Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds for not showing up to work until more than a day after she learned about the disaster. Even worse, said the paper, Freivalds did not sit worriedly at home like so many Swedes on Sunday night. Instead, she went to the theater in Stockholm. She did so knowing full well that, at that point, 10,000 people were already believed dead on Southeast Asia’s beaches, which draw Swedes in droves each winter. And she didn’t exactly rush to get to the office. “At nine o’clock the next day their chairs at the foreign office were still empty,” hissed the paper. “Not until 10.30 a.m., 31.5 hours after the death wave, did the foreign minister arrive at work.”
Is this grounds for Freivalds and Prime Minister Goeran Persson to resign? The paper thinks so, as, it seems do many Swedes. Since Wednesday, the Swedish Ministry has been deluged with thousands of nasty e-mails accusing the government of indecision, failure to act and not doing enough to help stranded and wounded Swedes get home. “You and your government’s incompetence shines like a beacon in the night,” wrote one Swede. “Today, Dec. 28, the government’s weakness and indecisiveness surpassed my wildest and most terrifying fantasies,” wrote another. Commentators, too, are lashing out. “I am ashamed of being Swedish when I have a prime minister who says that he can’t get more people answering telephones because it is Boxing Day (Dec.26) and people have the day off,” wrote Claes Thilander in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
This contrasts with the role of Lottie Knutsson, the information director at Fritidsresor, a travel company.
In fact, one of Sweden’s unlikely new stars is Lottie Knutsson, director of information for the travel company Fritidsresor. Since Sunday, Knutsson has been working tirelessly to arrange flights home for Swedes and to get the government to ship more medicine and send more airlifts to get the injured home. “Let Lottie Knutsson from Fritidsresor change places with Göran Persson,” one reader wrote to the Foreign Ministry. On Thursday, the headline of the daily Svenska Dagbladet screamed “Bring them home now,” referring to Swedes still stranded in Thailand.
It takes a disaster to bring home to many that their political elites, having sold their mess of pottage to Brussels, no longer subscribe to the notion that they are servants rather than masters.