Kyösti Karvonen from newspaper Kaleva: Election fever rising, but EU Presidency comes first

The EU Presidency will dominate and restrain Finnish domestic politics till the end of the year.

The biggest question hanging over the parliamentary elections, which will be held shortly after the Presidency finishes, is whether the Centre Party and the Social Democratic Party will continue to collaborate succesfully, as they have during the present parliament, writes Kyösti Karvonen, Managing Editor of the newspaper Kaleva.

In the six months leading up to parliamentary elections, political activity would normally be in top gear. But even though elections for the 200-seat Parliament, held every four years, will take place in March next year, the political autumn has started with the handbrake on.

Finland currently holds the Presidency of the European Union, and this is plainly curbing the clear and present desire of Finnish political parties to launch their election campaigns in full. And even though this second EU Presidency is partly routine for an old EU member like Finland, leading the EU successfully is a matter of honour for the Finns. For that reason, and for the period of the Presidency, political bickering will be kept on hold.

Another reason why election fever has remained under control so far is that the Finnish economy is growing fast, and is expected to accelerate even beyond six per cent towards the end of the year before levelling out. At the same time, the unemployment rate has continued to drop; 30,000 new jobs have already been created this year to add to the 50,000 created last year. Due to the favourable economic situation, the four-party majority government was able to agree on next year’s budget in record time in August.

The biggest domestic issue during the autumn was Finland’s participation in the UN crisis management operation, Unifil 2, in Lebanon, with about 200 soldiers. The President of Finland made the decision on the recommendation of the government on September 8, after the proposal was approved in Parliament by an overwhelming majority. The Finnish pioneer unit will arrive in southern Lebanon by November.

Partially obliged by the EU Presidency, Finland made it known from the beginning that it would commit troops to Lebanon. The decision was nevertheless not easy and was made more difficult by the death of a Finnish peacekeeper in the Israeli bombardment at Khiam during the July war. Finland demanded, and eventually received from Israel a report of the incident, in which another three UN military observers were killed in addition to the Finn. The UN will produce a report of its own on the incident. According to the Israeli report, the deaths were caused by an operational error. The explanation was met with mixed feelings in Finland.

Talk of conservative cooperation is over

But when the EU Presidency finishes at the end of the year, an all the more frantic last minute sprint will take place before the parliamentary elections. The leading question will of course be which two of the three biggest parties will form the basis for the new government after the elections. A two-party coalition is a political inevitability, as it is impossible in practice to form a majority government in any other way. Unlike many other European democracies, cooperation across the conservative and left-wing party boundaries is normal in Finland and in fact a political necessity. It brings stability and predictability to Finnish domestic politics .

If the events and speeches of the last few months are anything to go by, and subject to the election results, it looks most likely that, of the big parties, the current government parties, the Centre Party and the Social Democrats, will remain in office.

After the presidential election last January, the biggest opposition party, the centre-right National Coalition Party, was still harbouring hopes that the fairly functional cooperation among the right-wing parties would continue and lead to the formation of a conservative government after the parliamentary elections. The National Coalition Party's presidential candidate, Sauli Niinistö, narrowly lost the election to Tarja Halonen, who was re-elected in the second round. Niinistö received much support from Centre Party voters in the second round.

After the presidential election, comments were made within the Centre and National Coalition Parties that the post of Prime Minister should not necessarily go to the party which manages to get the most votes and seats in the parliamentary elections. Such comments alluded to the Finnish Constitution, which states that the biggest party begins the negotiations on forming a government, but, according to the aforementioned interpretation, it is not necessarily the party of the future Prime Minister. Such talk made the Social Democrats nervous. For decades, the SDP has most frequently been the largest party.
Now, however, speculation about a conservative government has abruptly stopped. In June, the government led by Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen managed to reach a compromise agreement on a municipal review, which will be one of the most important domestic policy challenges for Finland in the coming years. The main government parties, the Centre and the Social Democrats, had been on a collision course over the issue. In August the government managed to reach agreement on how Finland will compensate Finnish farmers for losses caused by cuts in EU agricultural subsidies. Thus the government managed to resolve two big domestic policy issues which, had they taken longer to resolve, might have easily inflamed the domestic political situation just before the elections, and could have influenced the formation of the next government.

A coalition government based on the Centre Party and the Social Democrats has traditionally been called a ‘red ochre’ government. In fact ‘red ochre’ is the colour of a paint traditionally used to paint the outsides of Finnish houses especially in rural areas. In politics, ‘red ochre’ refers to cooperation between the 'reds', i.e. the Social Democrats, and the ochres, i.e. the Centre Party, the latter having its historical support base in the countryside.

Niinistö became a liability

If Sauli Niinistö, currently one of the Vice Presidents of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, was a trump card for the National Coalition Party during the presidential election, he has quickly become no less than a liability for the party, or at least for its young chairman Jyrki Katainen.

Niinistö’s tenure of office in Luxembourg finishes in a year, and the big question in domestic politics is what he plans to do after that. In the spring Niinistö said a couple of times that he was considering standing in the parliamentary elections. In several past parliamentary elections, he has brought in so many votes that in normal circumstances his entry would be applauded.

But the situation now is different. While Niinistö has promised to support Katainen for the post of Prime Minister, the party has a problem: several polls indicate that members of the National Coalition Party consider Niinistö to be the main prime ministerial candidate, not Katainen. Katainen, who reversed the party’s decline in opinion polls, now finds himself in political limbo, in Niinistö's shadow.

Niinistö announced at the end of the summer that he would not be available for the elections after all. The Ilta-Sanomat newspaper reported that Katainen and the Chairman of the National Coalition’s parliamentary group, Jyri Häkämies, persuaded Niinistö not to stand for election. Later on, Katainen denied this and said that Niinistö’s candidature would be more than welcome. The final word on Niinistö’s intentions is still to be heard.

When Niinistö was asked for a clear statement on his withdrawal from politics, he lost his temper. “It is unbelievable… the demand that I should announce that I have left my political career completely behind me. I will make no such announcement,” Niinistö wrote in the biggest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on August 22. The paper’s editorial writer Erkki Pennanen had insisted on such an announcement from him. The reply has been interpreted as meaning that Niinistö might be interested in standing as his party's candidate in the next presidential elections in 2012.

Vanhanen leads in premiership polls

The number one name in prime ministerial polls is the Centre Party’s Matti Vanhanen, who failed miserably in the last presidential election. As leader of the government in office he naturally has an advantage in such surveys. Apart from Katainen’s problematic situation, Vanhanen’s position is strengthened by the fact that the new leader of the Social Democrats, Minister of Finance Eero Heinäluoma, has not yet been able to fill the shoes of a premiership candidate. The problems faced by the leaders of the National Coalition Party and the Social Democratic Party naturally improve Vanhanen’s position prior to the parliamentary elections.

Faced with this situation, Katainen has tried to raise his own profile. He criticised Prime Minister Vanhanen for the latter's invisibility when faced with the Lebanon crisis that dominated the beginning of Finland’s EU Presidency. It is true that Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja had the most visible role in that issue, but Prime Minister Vanhanen's presence became stronger once the back-to-back meetings that come with the EU Presidency started at the beginning of September.

Also facing a tough challenge in the parliamentary elections is Martti Korhonen, leader of the Left Alliance (successor to the Finnish Communist Party). His predecessor, the charismatic Suvi-Anne Siimes, left the party leadership in the spring slamming the doors behind her. The support base for the Left Alliance lies in the working class. Siimes crossed to the other side of the barricade and becomes Managing Director of Pharma Industry Finland, an employers’ association supervising the industrial policy interests of the research-based pharmaceutical industry.