The search continued and Jan Nyman, Ingela Thalén as well as Göran Persson became the new possible candidates, but all of them declined to run when approached by the election board.

After repeatedly declining to candidate Göran Persson suddenly changed his mind, accepted and was elected new leader of the Social Democratic Party and prime minister of Sweden in March 1996.

The county and city of Stockholm, governed by a coalition led by the Moderate Party, became subject to change of leadership as a result of the election and the criticism was quickly silenced.

During 2005 a scandal erupted as a result of widespread discontent with the lack of government aid to Swedes who fell victims to the notorious tsunami disaster, killing hundreds of Swedish tourists in December 2004.

A committee initiated an investigation in 2005 to shed some light on what really happened during the Christmas of 2004 and if anyone ever had noticed the early reports from the Swedish military intelligence offices.

During the live broadcast interrogations the CEO of the largest privately held Swedish TV-channel, Jan Scherman, claimed that Prime Minister Göran Persson threatened him during the election campaign in 2002.

In Sweden, the Swedish Television, SVT, with the other two large TV-channels, SVT1 and SVT2, is connected to the government and Social Democrats hold key positions among the board of directors.

Björn Rosengren, Social Democrat, former Minister of Enterprise and close friend of Göran Persson, has rapidly gained an influential position in the Swedish media company MTG which in turn owns TV-channels and newspapers such as Metro International.

Initially spokespersons of the Social Democratic Party denied all involvement in the defamation but were later forced to confess that one of their employees had written the letters as evidence became overwhelming.

In the aftermaths of criticism following on the tsunami disaster, the harshly criticised Swedish minister of foreign affairs, Laila Freivalds, managed to maintain her office.

That Freivalds did not declare the expected news herself, despite the fact that she was obviously present on the press conference, quickly spurred discussions about whether she resigned voluntarily or actually got dismissed by the prime minister.