Career
Ringholm was born in Falköping, a town in the west of Sweden, and grew up in a working-class family. He lacks higher education, and dropped out of high school after failing both Maths and English. Like many Swedish Social Democratic politicians of his generation, Ringholm started his political career in the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League, an organisation he led 1967–1972. As chairman of the Social Democratic Youth League, Ringholm was known for his radical left-wing views. Among other things, he advocated the nationalization of private-owned Swedish bank institutions and Swedish economic support to the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (FNL), the government of North Vietnam, the Pathet Lao in Laos and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
After stepping down from chairman of SSU, Ringholm worked as a political adviser at the Ministries of the Interior and Labour. He also became active in the local politics of Stockholm. From 1973 he was a member of the Stockholm County Council, and two years later he was elected to the executive committee of the Stockholm party branch. In 1976 he became a director at the Ministry of Education and Science, and worked in the government administration until he became Transportation Commissioner of the Stockholm County from 1983. From 1997 he was the director-general of the Swedish Labour Market Board (AMS), until Prime Minister Göran Persson unexpectedly named him to succeed Erik Åsbrink as Minister for Finance in 1999.
On October 21, 2004, Göran Persson announced a restructuring of his government, in which Ringholm was moved from the Ministry of Finance to become Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Policy Coordination and Minister for Sport. The reason cited by Persson was Ringholm was not interested in continuing as Minister of Finance following the coming 2006 general elections. His successor was Pär Nuder.
Following the resignation of Laila Freivalds on March 21, 2006, Ringholm was temporarily acting as Minister for Foreign Affairs until March 27, when he was replaced by Carin Jämtin who also held the post temporarily until the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jan Eliasson, took office on April 24.
Read more about this topic: Bosse Ringholm
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)