When asked by Ekot's Saturday interviewer if the number of cultural authorities should be reduced, Parisa Liljestrand replied "yes":
"I think we need to look at this issue, after all, it's like we have over 70 agencies to deal with," she said.
"A little easier way"
In a written comment to TT, the culture minister explains that by saying "over 70 authorities", she chose a "slightly easier way" to express herself.
What she intended was not only authorities but also "companies, foundations and other institutions that fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture", in total about 70, according to Parisa Liljestrand.
According to her, the number of instances can lead to the money that politics spends on culture being eaten up by bureaucracy.
"As I mentioned in the interview, it is about seeing what can be done in general so that all the activities for which the ministry is responsible function as efficiently as possible and that as much of the culture budget as possible reaches cultural practitioners and cultural consumers," Liljestrand writes.
"Literary scholar"
This is not the first time Parisa Liljestrand has been forced to clarify a wording. When she took office as culture minister, she described herself as a "literary scholar," a title she later backed away from.
- That was an unfortunate wording. In my professional role as a teacher, I have studied at Uppsala University and there you study parts of the Swedish education at the Department of Comparative Literature, she told TT [Tidningarnas Telegrambyra] at the time.