Losers and Winners

It’s been 19 days since the Finnish parliamentary election, and there is still no government in place. At least, not quite. This isn’t unusual. 

And, I should point out that by "government", I mean "cabinet". The actual functioning bureaucracy of government is still there, intact. 

Compare this situation to the US, where you have a built-in two-month lag time between the election of a new US Congress and its actual installment in the Capitol. For presidential elections, the constitutionally decreed “lame-duck” period between election and inauguration is even longer.

Though we’ve still been waiting for the final makeup of the new Finnish government, the results of the vote itself were clear within hours of the polls closing at eight three Sundays ago.

As was widely expected, the business-friendly Kokoomus party, the biggest in parliament going into the election, lost its dominate position, apparently the victim of general voter dissatisfaction over the anemic economic recovery (if it can be called that). In its place rose the Keskusta (Center) Party, the party of the legendary Urho Kekkonen who presided over Finnish politics for a quarter of a century during the Cold War.

Keskusta, led by self-made millionaire Juha Sipilä, won 21.1% of the vote nationwide, giving it 49 seats in the new parliament, a huge increase of 14 from four years ago. Keskusta took most of those seats from two parties: Kokoomus and the Social Democrats, which got 18.2% and 16.5% of the vote, respectively. It was an especially hard blow for the SDP, since its loss wasn’t so widely expected. They were blindsided.

One especially bright spot in the election was the five seats picked up by the Greens, bringing its representation up to 15.

Still, the headline news was the “rise”, relatively speaking, of the anti-immigration anti-EU Perussuomalaiset party. I say “relatively” because the 17.6% of the vote garnered by PS meant they actually lost one seat, ending up with 38. The level of support for PS didn’t change significantly. PS was propelled into the Number Two position simply by the collapse of Kokoomus and SDP.

(The fact that PS came out one seat ahead of Kokoomus despite getting a half-percentage-point fewer votes is down to the D’Hondt method used to allocate seats.)

Voter turnout, despite the apparent huge interest in the election, was a somewhat disappointing 70.1%.

And now another inevitable comparison to America: turnout in the US mid-term election of 2014 hit a scandalous post-war record low of 36.4%. Okay, mid-term elections always attract fewer voters than do presidential races, but even in the 2012 vote – in which many conservative zealots I know lusted for the chance to turn Obama out of office — only 58% of Americans bothered to vote. Some democracy. 

Meanwhile, back in Finland, turnout was higher in Helsinki than for the nation overall (almost 75%), and I was pleased to see that my neighborhood did even better, with a turnout of 82.4%.

The earnest voters of this part of suburban Helsinki, where I live and voted myself, went overwhelmingly (almost 40%) for Kokoomus, followed by SDP (16%), the Greens (15%), PS (12%), and in fifth place, Keskusta (only 9%). In fact, Keskusta won only 7% of the vote in Helsinki overall, showing that there is something to the idea that Keskusta is still mainly a party of the countryside.

Since Keskusta's big election night victory 19 days ago, Juha Sipilä has been trying to put together a coalition from among the biggest winning parties, apparently a meticulous process of negotiation. There’s been lots of speculation about who will be included in the new government. The biggest worry among more mainstream establishment types is that, with its second-place finish, Perussuomalaiset will now demand a prominent role in the cabinet, something they didn’t seemed inclined to do four years ago.

With the announcement yesterday of an agreement finally being reached, those fears were proven to be well founded. The next government will indeed be a mashup of the rural Keskusta party and the more nativist Perussuomalaiset party, joined by Kokoomus, though this all remains to be formally finalized next week. 

The SDP was left out completely, as was the smaller, moderate Swedish People’s Party, which has had a role in every government for almost forty years.

The question now is how well will the Perussuomalaiset handle being in government, as opposed to just sniping at it. 

The Unthinkable

Anders Behring Breivik’s homicidal rampage in Norway a week ago has saddened many people here and has surely led to a lot of soul-searching as Finns come to grips with the very notion that something so awful could happen to a fellow Nordic country. 

The attack at Utøya also seemed to weigh heavily on the mind of my daughter, who is the same age as many of Breivik’s young victims.  The question that seems to be foremost on her mind is:  “Could it happen here in Finland?”

My gut response is to say, no, of course not.  It’s unthinkable that such a heinous act on that scale could ever happen here.  But, since I would have said the same of Norway a week ago, I guess we’re all being forced now to rethink the unthinkable. 

Not that Finland hasn’t already had its share of senseless gun violence.  We have the depressing distinction of having suffered through two tragic school shootings within the past four years – more than any other European country outside of Germany.  And the streets of Helsinki have seen at least one car bombing (that I can recall), but that was simply a settling of scores between criminals, as if that somehow makes it less worrisome. 

It’s not as if the prejudice towards immigrants that fueled Breivik’s hatred is unknown here.  The stunning rise of the Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) party in the last election attests to the anti-immigrant sentiment that appears to be growing in at least certain parts of Finnish society.  In fact, a prominent member of Perussuomalaiset, Jussi Halla-aho, a firebrand blogger and now a parliament member, was even quoted in the 1500-page “manifesto” that Breivik sent out just before beginning his killing spree. 

The manifesto, from the fraction of it that I briefly scanned, is an impressive document.  And not in a good way.  Obviously, the product of an obsessive mind, the manifesto lays out, in excruciating detail, precise instructions on how to carry out the kind of atrocity that Breivik inflicted on his countrymen. 

It also, as you would imagine, tries to explain his twisted world-view, which in a nutshell appears to be:  native Europeans should rise up, violently if necessary, to expel all non-European immigrants, especially Muslims, in order to re-establish a continent of ethnically pure European Christians. 

I can’t imagine anyone in Finland – anyone with any grounding in reality that is – sharing Breivik’s grand vision of a return to the Christendom of the Middle Ages.  But some of his attitudes and sense of grievance towards his Muslim neighbors are not, I would say, especially remarkable.  While many people here, maybe even most, aren’t noticeably bothered by the recent, though by European standards relatively small, influx of foreigners to Finland, it would be naïve to think others don’t view the changing demographics with emotions ranging from annoyance to anxiety to fear to outright hostility.  And, of course, there can be legitimate societal concerns about some aspects of immigration, which can be debated peacefully. 

But when those legitimate concerns veer off into hatred, then we should all be concerned.  Despite Perussuomalaiset's strong showing in spring, I still hope the more hateful strains of xenophobia are not making major inroads in Finland.  But how do we know?  Under the surface, how can we be sure that some Finns don’t secretly harbor the beginnings of blind hatred?  I haven’t heard anything approaching such feelings expressed by any Finns I know.  On the other hand, it’s not a topic that has often come up in the past. 

What I told my daughter was that there are, of course, some people who are not comfortable with immigration and the changes it brings to Finnish society, the very kind of changes that Breivik rails against.  But, I hasten to add that most people, even those with the strongest anti-immigration views, are surely acting only through the political process.  It is only the thankfully rare individual who lets their extreme hatred take them to the point of murdering innocent people in cold-blood. 

And I believe that, though it doesn’t mean those individuals may not be out there, plotting in some isolated barn in the peaceful Finnish countryside.  As Breivik demonstrated with such horrible efficiency, it only takes one person to darken the lives of dozens of families and bring sorrow to an entire nation. 

I also tell my daughter that, especially after Utøya, I’m sure the police in Finland are being especially vigilant.  I’m sure that more than ever before they’re on the lookout for anyone disaffected and demented enough to hatch a similar plan.  At least, I hope they are.  I hope we all are.  

There has been a lot of talk in the media and in government in the past week about the potential threat that right-wing extremists might pose here and the changes needed to counter it.  After Utøya, I hope we will all be less complacent toward extremism and that supporters of the True Finns reflect on the dangerous path their anti-immigrant platform can lead them down.  They should.

So, when my daughter wondered if it could happen here, I responded with the same answer that I used to give when the kids would ask – at the beginning of our summer trips to America – whether our plane might fall from the sky.  I say, “Yes, it could.  But I don’t think it will.”  Otherwise, how else could you carry on?  

Finnish Election Drama

This past weekend, the first this year with weather pleasant enough for some serious yard work, Finland held a parliamentary election.  To someone like me, who doesn’t pay that much attention to Finnish politics, these once-every-four-years polls are usually unremarkable, especially when you compare them to the circus that US politics has become. 

Finnish politics has been dominated in recent decades by three main parties:  the National Coalition Party (center-right), the Center Party (well, the name says it all), and the Social Democrats (center-left).  To be honest, I couldn’t reliably say what the differences are between these three, beyond the basic philosophies indicated by their location on the political spectrum.  For example, the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus, in Finnish) is generally more pro-business than the other two, while the Social Democrats are likewise the most pro-labor of the three. 

Fittingly for the consensus nature of Finnish politics, these three parties mostly agree on the main issues and squabble only over details.  At least that’s how it looks to me.  All three are decidedly in favor of Finland’s social-welfare system.  All three support a foreign policy of neutrality and strong international cooperation, though Kokoomus comes closer than the others to envisioning Finland joining NATO.  And all three are squarely behind Finland’s liberal stance on equal rights. 

Timo Soini, leader of the True Finns.
Photo by Soppakanuuna

This isn’t much different from the way the US political scene appears to folks over here.  While Americans might like to think Republicans and Democrats represent diametrically different approaches to government, Finns wouldn’t necessarily see big differences between two.  I would disagree with that view, especially considering the 180-degree direction the Dems and GOP have taken on health care and other issues recently.

Politics here in Finland is, of course, not limited to two parties, or even just the Big Three. Voters can also choose from a dozen or so other parties of varying sizes and political beliefs.  Among the smaller parties that garner enough support to actually make it into parliament are the Swedish People’s Party (historically advocating for Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority), the Left Alliance (the most-mainstream of the parties that survived the turbulent history of Finnish Communism), the Green League, and the Christian Democrats.  A relative newcomer to these also-ran parties is the so-called True Finns Party, or Perussuomalaiset in Finnish.  I’m not sure why this party’s name is invariably translated as “True Finns”, since it actually means “Basic Finns”.  Maybe that somehow doesn't sound as sexy. 

Sexy or not, Perussuomalaiset has been turning heads since Sunday, and not in a good way.  I’ve always found elections in Finland to be fairly sedate affairs.  Campaign ads on TV are nothing like the overly produced spots you see in the States.  Most candidates rely on newspaper advertisements and election placards that are displayed side by side in large, purpose-built aluminum frames set up on sidewalks so passers-by can check out the candidates from different parties.  Flags fly on Election Day itself, and there’s notably higher foot traffic past our house as more people than normal – even for good weather – stroll by on their way to the little hilltop school that serves as the polling station for our neighborhood. 

Voting itself is simple.  You just write the number assigned to your candidate in the circle printed on an otherwise blank paper ballot and drop it in the box.  Non-Finnish permanent residents, such as myself, can vote in municipal elections, but not in national races.  After the polls close, the election results dominate TV programming, but the vibe is extremely low-key compared to the Las Vegas glitz of US election coverage.  The votes are usually all counted and the winners declared well before midnight, and the results themselves are, from my point of view, always a bit ho-hum. 

Not this Sunday.  To the shock, and I mean that literally, of most people I know, the True Finns won a landslide victory.  They didn’t come in first, or even second.  For this renegade, protest party, a third-place finish was enough to upset the apple cart of Finnish politics.  By winning 19% of the vote nationwide, the True Finns added a whopping 34 parliament seats to the mere five they held previously.  Only five seats shy of the 44 won by first-place Kokoomus, the True Finns came surprisingly close to putting their charismatic and eloquent leader, Timo Soini, in the driver seat of the next government.  This has surely scared the bejesus out many Finns.  

Voters checking out the candidates.

It’s not as if the True Finns came out of nowhere.  The party was founded in 1995, from the ashes – so to speak – of the populist Finnish Rural Party, which had fizzled out after its own charismatic and eloquent leader stepped down.  Until this Sunday, however, the True Finns have had at best a marginal influence on Finnish politics. 

It’s tempting to compare the True Finns to the Tea Party in the States.  There are similarities.  Both are protest movements tapping into grass-root dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs.  Both hark back to a more “traditional” past, and both gleefully thumb their noses at the political establishment.  But while the Tea Party is fixated on lowering taxes and shrinking the size of government, the True Finns seems to be fully in favor of the welfare state and progressive taxation, which makes it positively leftist.  What sets the True Finns apart from the mainstream Finnish parties is its more blatant appeal to nativism.  It is skeptical of the EU and favors restricting the flow of new immigrants, at least those who come here on humanitarian grounds.  These views, to say the least, are not shared by most Finns, but are nonetheless signs of a worrying trend in this country.  Whether this trend eventually propels the True Finns to more shocking electoral wins and an even bigger role in government will have to wait until another springtime Sunday, four years from now.