STOCKHOLM
The Swedish Green Party faced another backlash on Tuesday when a poll released on the same day said the majority of respondents wanted the two co-leaders of the party to resign.
According to the poll, conducted by the daily newspaper Aftonbladet and research company Inizio, 66 percent of the respondents want Green Party co-leader and Deputy Prime Minister Asa Romson to resign from her post.
Nearly 60 percent also said they had "had very little confidence in her". Romson faced controversy on April 19 when, on a local TV program, she referred to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an "accident".
In addition, around 37 percent of the respondents said they wanted the Green Party co-leader and minister of education, Gustav Fridolin, to resign, and 42 percent said they "had very little confidence in him".
The Green Party formed a fragile minority government with the Social Democrats after the 2014 elections.
It has lately been mired in media controversies involving several of its members.
Sweden’s housing minister Mehmet Kaplan, of the Green Party, was forced to resign last Monday after being criticized in Swedish media for a series of comments he made, including statements, pronounced in 2009, on Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
Kaplan said he had done nothing wrong but was forced to resign because the criticism was interfering with his ability to carry out his duties.
Two days later, Yasri Shamsudin Khan, the head of Sweden’s Islamic Youth Federation, left the Green Party, citing prejudice against his religious beliefs.
Khan said he had to quit because he was "subjected to a lynch-campaign from both inside and outside the [Green] party" over his refusal to shake a female journalist’s hand on a local TV program.
A spokeswoman for the Green Party youth wing was the latest person of Turkish origin and of Muslim background to resign from the party.
"I no longer feel safe in politics or in my settlement," Semanur Taskin said in an article released on Saturday for the Swedish daily Aftonbladet, in which she announced her resignation from the Green Party.
"I feel that I do not belong," Taskin said. "I have doubts over how society looks at me and my commitment [to politics] as a Swedish Muslim."
The government has faced increased scrutiny as Sweden has taken in the most refugees per capita in Europe, amid an emerging far-right and anti-immigrant movement.
The Green Party is set to hold an annual congress in mid-May to decide whether to replace its leadership.
