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Denmark's Liberal Party to form minority gov't alone

Xinhua, June 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

Denmark's Liberal Party, known as Venstre in Danish, will form a minority government alone, the incoming prime minister said Friday.

"It is my assessment after the meeting tonight that it will be possible to form a pure Venstre government," Lars Loekke Rasmussen said, referring to a meeting with other center-right parties on Friday.

He said he will inform on Saturday Queen Margrethe II of the decision, adding the new government will be ready to present its policies on Sunday.

Despite the victory of the center-right blue bloc in Denmark's 2015 parliamentary election, the Liberal Party suffered its worst election results in 25 years as it won only 19.5 percent of the vote and 34 seats in the 179-member Danish parliament, a 7.2 percent decline from the previous election in 2011.

As such, the new government will have the smallest support in parliament since Poul Hartling, the then leader of the Liberal Party, formed a minority government with only 22 seats in 1973.

It was previously expected that Rasmussen's first choice would have been the Danish People's Party (DPP) as a coalition partner as it would create much more stability for the new government.

After several days of negotiations, however, the Liberal Party failed to form a coalition with the DPP as they disagreed on several key issues such as border control and the DPP had refused to give in to its demand.

"I do not believe that it will be possible to make a border control that the Danish People's Party is satisfied with, and which at the same time is in full compliance with our obligations under the EU law," Rasmussen said.

Moreover, the issue of growth in government consumption has separated the two parties as the DPP wants an annual growth in the public sector of 0.8 percent, while the Liberals plan to freeze public sector growth.

Commentators here believe that a pure Venstre government will lack strength.

"It's a weak government," said Troels Mylenberg, chief editor of Danish newspaper Fyns Amts Avis.

Dennis Flydtkjaer, a member of the DPP, agreed. "Now it will be a tough term for Rasmussen, which unfortunately can be short," he said. Endi