C of Carld Bildt

The third letter of the alphabet about Sweden talks about a politician. Carl Bildt is the Henrik Larsson of Sweden's foreign policy. In Brazil, his equivalent would be former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, aka FHC, that kind of politician that doesn't speak, attests! Whatever they say sounds the truth, nothing but the truth. As FHC, Bildt can circulate at a meeting of the most important head of States and they will all stop to talk to him. He is a former prime minister that in the mid 90's became the EU and UN man at the aftermath of the Balkan conflicts. Last year Bildt came back to Sweden's politics as the Foreign Affairs minister of the new conservative cabinet. However - and the comparison with FHC stops here - Carl's image has been damaged for a lot of evidences of partnership with not-so-respectful investors around the world. First it was found that he had some shares at a group that invests in a Russian oil company that wants to build a duct under the already polluted-to-death Baltic Sea - something that the Swedish government, of which Bildt is a member, is totally against. Then his name was linked also to a Swedish oil company with investments in Sudan and to a group called Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, described by the Swedish media as a conservative lobby group close George W. Bush and the arms industry pushing for invasion of Iraq. Despite of that, most of Swedish media has been quite nice to him and it was not hard to find columnists defending Carl. It sounded like provincialism and like it has been hard for some Swedes to cope with the fact that Bild's hands are not so clean as they thought. As someone said the other day, "it's just like saying Henke Larsson has done something wrong. It's too much of a schock".