Finnish elections 2015

[Tiriol]

So, Finnish parliamentary elections are under way. Polls indicate that the agrarian Centre Party is going to have a definite lead with over 23 per cent support. The actual contest is going to be about second place: whether it is National Coalition Party (right wing), Social Democratic Party (left wing) or Finns Party (socially conservative). The poll with latest information would indicate that it is a tie between Coalition Party and Social Democratic Party (17 per cent support for each) with (True) Finns just behind (it was 16.6 per cent support, I think). The LATEST poll (one gathered by YLE News, which had older information than one published by Helsingin Sanomat, but it was published later) on the other hand would give the second place to National Coalition Party, third place to True Finns and the fourth place for Social Democrats.

So, in short: the elections are going to be about whether Finland will have a right-wing government for the next four years (with Centre Party as Prime Minister party and True Finns and Coalition Party as cabinet members) or whether it will have "punamulta" (red soil) government with Centre Party, once again, as Prime Minister party and Social Democrats as the next biggest cabinet party.

I wouldn't get my hopes up for the SDP, though: there has been rumors and speculations that even if SDP would get the second place, Juha Sipilä (Chairman of the Party and most likely Prime Minister candidate) would prefer right-wing coalition, even though polls also show that the general Centre Party membership would prefer SDP as their cabinet partner.

We will learn more later this evening when election booths close and votes are counted.

[Aasharu]

So, what does left wing and right wing mean in Finnish politics? What are some of the issues on the line this election?

[Edi]

Economy, economy, economy. Jobs, competitiveness and lots of other things, as well as institutional reforms of some of the government structures.

Our right wing is more or less like the more liberal Democrats in the US while our left wing is the old Social Democrats and such.

The Red Soil name for a Center Party / SDP coalition comes from the Center Party having its roots as the party of the farmers and other country folk. It used to be named the Finnish Rural Party or something like that before it changed the name so it could have a chance in cities as well.

[Lord Revan]

big problem for me was that there's was plenty of candidates I wouldn't vote even if they paid me to but it was hard to deside what I actually wanted to vote.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Out of curiosity. What was the effect of Nokia's collapse on the Finnish economy? Seeing as how big it was at one point.

[Gunhead]

Looks more and more it'll be center-right cabinet. Might go Centre party, Coalition party and True Finns sharing the important seats, but it's not given that social democrats will be totally left out. Out of the rest, only the Green party made serious gains. Had the same problem as Revan. After four years of fucking it up, I have no confidence in any of the big four.

-Gunhead

[Edi]

Yeah, with 92% of votes counted, Center Party got the biggest pot, at ~22%, National Coalition and True Finns within a hair's breadth of each other at 17.8% and 17.9% or something like that and then the Social Democrats. Greens got a good haul, better than ever before. They've managed to connect a lot with the younger voters, I think, and they've had quite a generation change when compared to several other parties.

I didn't have a problem with a choice of candidates, I actually had more options than usually, though I already knew what party I was going to vote for.

The National Coalition's biggest problem right now is leadership, because the previous PM Katainen was a complete fuckup by any measuring stick. Stubb had to spend all of his time in office losing the battles Katainen had mismanaged past recovery, and while he is excellent foreign or foreign trade minister, he is not really prime minister material. Center Party's Sipilä gets to wear that hat next, and I actually don't have any expectations of his performance. He's too much of an unknown to me, I don't know enough about him.

The Social Democrats need to ditch the old guard if they want to get anything done, because right now their general appearance is positively ancient. The True Finns have siphoned off a lot of votes that would otherwise have been either SDP or Leftist Alliance. Given that former arch communist Tuomioja is one of SDP's perpetual big vote getters and the Leftists are left of the SDP, it'll be a cold day in hell before I vote for either of those parties. Especially in their present incarnations.

With the current vote totals, if the three biggest parties form a joint government and can hold party discipline, they can freeze out everyone else and still be left with a comfortable margin. Which is probably not even a bad thing, because the five or six party Rainbow Coalitions have been total clusterfucks for the most part.

[His Divine Shadow]

Threw my vote on a random left party candidate the is year, to no avail, but I've really had it up to here with the rich peoples fuck finland over party tenure so something drastic was needed I felt.

[Tiriol]

I voted for Social Democrats and as such I'm pretty disappointed in the results. The clear winner was a party which has avoided stating any policies besides "something needs to be done!" and whose chairman has refused to give any answers about any policies whatsoever. Apparently Finns have forgotten who ran things just four years ago and now we have Paavo "Crimea is legimitately Russia's!" Väyrynen back in Parliament with his Kekkonen-era sensibilities. I must remember this election tactic next time, since it apparently produces results: don't say anything or tell what your goals and plans are so yu can avoid all hard questions. True Finns came in second, so people were all too willing to vote for racists, troglodytes and homophobes. And less said about National Coalition the better... the party's election slogan was "Politics are broken!" after doing their darnest to ensure that state of affairs for four years straight.

My prediction: austerity will hit Finland hard (meaning that poor will be fucked without lubricants, students will feel full brunt of so-called "adjustments" and with Centre Party in power Helsinki and other cities can kiss any development plans with government involvement goodbye). And good luck if you're a member of sexual minority or otherwise a poor fit to "traditional" values, you're going to need it.

We just have to hope that European economic recovery and growth will aid us, as well, before we go full Thatcher mode.

Edit: I actually forgot: just about the only policy Sipilä has stated openly is that Finland needs to reduce its public sector. Basically this will mean that he will try to gut everything operating in public sector except muncipality administration, since that would piss off Centre voters. Oh, and Defence Forces will probably avoid such measures, it would be political suicide at this point.

[General Mung Beans]

Yeah, with 92% of votes counted, Center Party got the biggest pot, at ~22%, National Coalition and True Finns within a hair's breadth of each other at 17.8% and 17.9% or something like that and then the Social Democrats. Greens got a good haul, better than ever before. They've managed to connect a lot with the younger voters, I think, and they've had quite a generation change when compared to several other parties.

I didn't have a problem with a choice of candidates, I actually had more options than usually, though I already knew what party I was going to vote for.

The National Coalition's biggest problem right now is leadership, because the previous PM Katainen was a complete fuckup by any measuring stick. Stubb had to spend all of his time in office losing the battles Katainen had mismanaged past recovery, and while he is excellent foreign or foreign trade minister, he is not really prime minister material. Center Party's Sipilä gets to wear that hat next, and I actually don't have any expectations of his performance. He's too much of an unknown to me, I don't know enough about him.

The Social Democrats need to ditch the old guard if they want to get anything done, because right now their general appearance is positively ancient. The True Finns have siphoned off a lot of votes that would otherwise have been either SDP or Leftist Alliance. Given that former arch communist Tuomioja is one of SDP's perpetual big vote getters and the Leftists are left of the SDP, it'll be a cold day in hell before I vote for either of those parties. Especially in their present incarnations.

With the current vote totals, if the three biggest parties form a joint government and can hold party discipline, they can freeze out everyone else and still be left with a comfortable margin. Which is probably not even a bad thing, because the five or six party Rainbow Coalitions have been total clusterfucks for the most part.

Who did you vote for out of curiosity?

[His Divine Shadow]

I don't think sexual minorities need to worry, given the gains that they've managed to get and that the christian democrats went back and greens who where in favor of it went forward.

Nor do I think most TF voters are voting on primarily on the grounds of homophobia and racism, a lot of TF's policies on the local level at least seem quite left-ish and keeping the countryside alive (something that needs leftist politics to happen) appeals to all those living out there. Though on national level they seem to buy into austerity. My impression is that TF is taking a lot of potential votes away from SDP, and I think a lot of people have become disillusioned with SDP after their slow move rightwards through the years (though every party has done so).

TF also has their euro and EU skeptic stance, it's populist but the EU is one big neo-liberal force by our standards and the working man is becoming ever more disillusioned with neoliberalism IMO. But it seems to be more or less embraced by most parties.

Sure there's the Left Alliance, but they are big city parties, they don't even seem to like that the countryside exists and make no real effort to get voters from there. Lots of LA voters I've talked to also seem to think that socialism is for the 3-4 biggest cities only, raw capitalism should rule elsewhere in the country. So there was a definite hole for TF to exploit.


I couldn't stand to vote for RKP this year after I saw how bourgeoisie it had really become. I sure as heck don't consider myself an LA voter, I just felt I needed to throw my rock as far away from the NC side of the scale as possible.

[His Divine Shadow]

I liked this editorial, it's from the minority language section of yle (swe), so perhaps google translat will yield a somewhat understandable result, cleaning up the translation in quote tags a bit:

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... edit-text=

Janne Wass: What is wrong with the Finnish electorate?
That was my first thought after the election results became clear. No, I know, it's not a very constructive approach. But we made it after all again.

We shuffled around the Coalition Party and the Centre Party seats a bit and hoped that now - this time - it should surely go better than the last. What we have done since Matti Vanhanen's first government, and - honestly - it has become better? I mean, regardless of what political orientation you have, it feels as if the Coalition Party and the Centre Party have been trying for a long time now. Nice try guys, but what if we would try something else for a while?

But still the same old show that the public sector is too large and if we cut it down all will be fine. But did you know that the state employees since the 80's has been slashed by around 250,000 people to around 70,000 people. Finland is today relatively speaking, the EU country with the least of state employees. It looks as if these cuts have helped to improve our country's economy? Or is it possible that elsewhere the problems lie?

Finland's success after the war was based on a balanced mix of market economy and protectionism, as well as an egalitarian pathos. Equality, solidarity, equal division was a recipe that among other things, created one of the world's best health systems, perhaps the world's best school systems and one of the world's most stable economies.

Finnish companies were built with government help, and in return was seen with state ownership to profit stayed in the country and was for the population. After this system had built Nokia and other successful companies and made Finland one of the most competitive countries in the world, we deregulated the economy and, after a brief Nokia inspired Financial hype everything went downhill from there on.

And the remedy for this downhill path has been to deregulate more, and when it's not helped've been told that we've not deregulated enough and tightened too little.

We say that politicians are too far removed from ordinary people's everyday lives. Well, who do we choose to put our votes on when D-day comes? Millionaire Sipilä, millionaire Harkimo and jet-Stubb. When do you think any of these later received pawned bottles to raise enough money to buy a carton of milk?

And those who cry most loudly for a change place their votes at a party whose MPs stumble around drunk on election night, and whose adherents cheerfully sieg heils the Parliamentary Chamber and whose values ​​are the earliest medieval. Gays and Somalis they want to send to Åland, and swedish speaking Finns, and other lepers to be put on a boat to sweden. Then we want to go on a crusade against the Muslim barbarians who this time not content to occupy Jerusalem, also conquered Helsinki. Is this really "a Change We Can Believe In"?

What is wrong with the Finnish Left? It was my second question, and maybe it's a little more constructive. You'd think when the Social Democrats more or less built up Finland from scratch, that they would manage to find the case for pursuing social democratic politics. But no. Instead they look enviously at the right-wing parties austerity-competition and announces that we can also do this.

How can you take a social democratic party seriously who does not even dare to engage in social democratic politics? Who wants to vote for the Coalition light, when you've got the Coalition? Antti Rinne did not show any particularly insightful disease identification when he during election night announced that it was not the policy of the party there was something wrong but, the Social Democrats simply not seen enough.

What I have genuinely difficult question to answer is what the Left Alliance's decline is due. Success for candidates Li Andersson, Silvia Modig and Hanna Sarkkinen show that the talk about the Left's an old antiquated old man's party is certainly not true more. But perhaps the problem is that you forgot the old dusty old men in the rejuvenation frenzy. A working party that fails to attract workers to the polls, is something of a problem. Overall, however, the truth is that the combined left parties got about 25 percent of the votes in the election, which is historically low.

For someone with liberal, red-green values ​​is of course the Greens' success a bright spot, along with the success of young left candidates - in addition to the above, one can, for example, highlight the Social Democrats Nasima Razmyar and True Navy. The problem with the Greens is that like other parties, founded as a private business movements, they have an economic policy that goes up and down like a yo-yo.

It now remains to see what kind of government Juha Sipilä concocts of the geographic mix before him - but everything indicates that we can expect four years of the same toothless policy.

[Edi]

Who did you vote for out of curiosity?

One of the smarter, younger National Coalition candidates, but she did not get enough votes to get through.

In a certain sense, this election was about choosing the least of several bad options, though that is more related to the parties rather than the individual candidates. I'll never vote Left Alliance, and Social Democrats would need a serious overhaul I would even consider them. I don't trust the Center Party because of the reasons Tiriol enumerated. I won't even consider Greens as long as they oppose nuclear power and True Finns are more or less just SDP economic policies mated with social conservatism, so between them, SDP would be better. The Swedish Folkspartiet will never budge on the issue of Swedish being a mandatory language that drains resources from other things that are more useful, so they are more or less a one issue party devoted to protecting a special privilege (since unless you know Swedish, all government jobs are off limits) and willing to compromise on everything else. No thanks. And the Christian Theocrats Democrats can go fuck themselves.

That sort of narrows my options down pretty severely. In terms of social policies, the Greens would be the best fit, but on too many important issues they have their heads firmly lodged up their arses.

[Tiriol]

An update: right-leaning government about to be formed in Finland.

Sipilä opts for right-leaning government

Centre Party chair Juha Sipilä announced on Thursday evening that he will begin coalition talks with the Finns Party and National Coalition Party. They aim to form a new government for economically-ailing Finland within the next three weeks.


After a brief meeting with party chairs at the Little Parliament building, Prime Minister-designate Juha Sipilä said he aims to form a new non-socialist government including the three largest parties. Together they hold more than 61 percent of the seats in the new legislature.

He said there had been discussions about forming a coalition including the four largest parties, but that this turned out to be unfeasible. Instead he opted for a three-way government including the three biggest. This follows a cumbersome NCP-led cabinet that began with six parties, shedding one along the way.

Formal negotiations are to begin at 1 pm on Friday. The three parties' leaderships will meet separately over the weekend before coalition talks resume on Monday morning.

In brief comments, all three party leaders stressed that their main task will be trying to turn around Finland's dire economic situation, and that painful decisions will have to be made. According to some estimates, Finland faces a 'sustainability gap' of some 10 billion euros as its population ages and social and healthcare costs balloon.

The 3 Aces?

On a lighter note, Sipilä quipped that all three party chairs' surnames begin with the letter 'S' and punned that perhaps they could be referred to as the Three Aces, which is pronounced in Finnish the same way as the 'Three S's'. It was also the name of an Yle animated show for children about three detectives. The PM-to-be also jokingly referred to Trio S, which he described as a humppa (traditional dance music) band from the northern city of Oulu.

Sipilä said he aims for a smaller cabinet, perhaps of just 12 ministers compared to 17-18 in the previous government. Soini and Stubb declined to say which portfolios they would themselves prefer. Pundits have speculated that Soini is a shoo-in for Finance while Stubb would resume his former post as Foreign Minister, which he held in 2008-11.

The Centre and NCP have taken part in dozens of cabinets during Finland's near-century of independence, while Soini's party has no government experience.

Solid majority

Social Democratic chair Antti Rinne said earlier his party would not be taking part, leaving a Centre-Finns Party-NCP triumvirate the apparent set-up. The Left Alliance, Greens, Christian Democratic and Swedish People Party leaders also confirmed to Yle that their parties would be in opposition. The latter, a small middle-of-the-road party, has been a regular fixture in the government for 36 years.

Besides the two largest blocs in Parliament, his own Centre Party and the Finns Party, Sipilä was expected to pick either outgoing premier Alexander Stubb's conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) or the Social Democrats (SDP), plus possibly one or two small parties. The SDP was the second major partner in the last government, while the Centre and Finns were the largest opposition parties.

The Centre has 49 seats in the new 200-seat legislature, followed by the Finns Party with 38 seats and the NCP with 37. The latter actually won more popular votes, but ended up with one seat fewer due to the complexities of the electoral system. Together the three would have a broad majority of 123 seats, as the Speaker of Parliament does not vote.

Tight timetable

Sipilä, whose party won April's election by a significant margin, has said he wants to form the new government before the end of May.

Last night Sipilä abandoned talks aimed at reaching a 'social contract' with Finland's labour market organisations before forming the coalition. Sipilä said that no one involved in the talks could be blamed for the failure, but now that his efforts to make a deal have folded, the new government will have to find ways to implement even more cost cuts.

My predictions:
True Finns will lose support. And hard. Now when they are almost certainly going to be in the new government, they can either piss off government partners with their usual antics, hatred of EU, hatred of minorities and general troglodytism, or they will have to stay in line (including Greek bailouts). Timo Soini, their chairman, has such a hard-on for a minister's chair that he is ready to suffer dozens of heart attacks just so that he can say "I once once a minister, you know", so he's probably ready to let his populist party suffer for that priviledge. True Finns are also going to be involved in closing this "10 billion euros" sustainability gap which is counter to just about every promise they made during election campaign. Of course, True Finns are not a leftist party by a long shot: they are socially conservative party with people from both left and right wing of Finnish politics. So some among them will cheer for budget cuts that are about to come and some will feel like they have personally been insulted and betrayed.

National Coalition now has some time to get its shit together. Now, as a junior member in right-leaning government, they can see several of their economical policies realized, which must make several of them cream their pants.

As for the Centre Party: Sipilä guards his privacy and thoughts so jealously that we can only guess what goes on inside his head or even Centre Party HQ (although they have also already taken part in True Finns -like "eating of campaign promises" and backpedaling). However, the 10 billion euros amount of gap was and is a claim forwarded EK, Elintarvike-elämän keskusliitto (basically a central organization for biggest employer unions in Finland) - not even the right-leaning Finance Ministry's officials have claimed as much (officials have spoken about 6 euros of sustainability gap/need for austerity). And Sipilä is fully supporting that claim. He tried to negotiate a "social contract" between employer and employee unions and gave just a couple of days' time for the negotiations to proceed and then said that the negotiations were a failure, now he'll do it his way. EK backs him up on this while trade unions, understandably, don't. Sipilä is either totally clueless how actual negotiations proceed when not dealing with employers (he's an enterpreneur, not a politician, by trade) and expected the trade unions to fold immediately (and not demand anything from employers back), or he just wanted to use the negotiations as a smoke screen.

Basically: we will have austerity hitting Finland hard. I don't think government is going to be mad enough to cut budget by 10 billions immediately, but they are going to do insane cost-savings which will bite the Finnish society in the ass. We are still dealing with fallout of early 90s depression, after all, and our social and health services have never recovered from it fully - now we are going for round two. Just about the only public organization I'm quite sure is safe from any budget cuts is the military, unless government is ready to shoot itself not only in the foot, but in the arm and stomache as well.

One good thing, though: Paavo Väyrynen, that slimy disciple of Finlandization, is not going to have a minister's position unless something truly insane happens.

[madd0ct0r]

so true finns are going to go the way of the lib dems in the UK? A short term trying to restrain larger coalition, then brutual punishment for not being effective eneough?

[Tiriol]

so true finns are going to go the way of the lib dems in the UK? A short term trying to restrain larger coalition, then brutual punishment for not being effective eneough?

Rather they've built their entire election campaign on fear ("FOREIGNERS TAKING OUR MONEY! WAR IS NEAR!") and now they are in a place where they will actually have real chance to influence things their way. But they cannot: Greece will still get its bailouts if EU calls for them, despite True Finns vowing to fight against it; Finland will not suddenly take steps away from EU, which will disappoint several True Finns voters; and all the talk about being "a workers' party" will disappear in the air once True Finns start parroting employers' union's figures and try to adjust 10 billion euros' worth of public spending. It's more likely that National Coalition and Centre Party have to restrain True Finns from making themselves total asses in front of everyone.

They cannot cash on their campaign promises, implicit or otherwise. Instead of being on the side of little people, like they claim to be, they only offer, along with right-wing parties, even bigger budget cuts and adjustments that even usually hawkish Finance Ministry officials have proposed. All what they will have left is fear of change (like equal marriage act, which they opposed vehemently) and of outside world (foreigners, immigrants etc.). A populist party is always in trouble once it has actual duties and responsibilities to fulfill. And if/when Timo Soini's health fails him so badly that he must step down from his decades-long chairmanship of the party, there is no one else as charismatic and yet as refined as him left in the party, or at least none come to my mind (neither Jussi Niinistö, a very pro-military type of guy, nor Jussi Halla-aho, a true rabble-rouser and racist agitator, have the same kind of actual charisma or ability to relate to people).

[Gunhead]

I further predict the True Finns will be on a leash because they're the new party on the block with little or no actual minister experience in them. They're the third wheel where the other major parties can all on actual experience on how to run a government and can maintain discipline among the officials who work for them instead of being at their mercy at all times. Which is really worrying to me. In these economic times you need people who already know the system, but now we might be dumped with a whole bunch of first time ministers. The only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that the Center party gets to dole out the positions so all the important seats might get someone with experience on them... except financial which look like it will go to Soini... and that is not a good thing.

-Gunhead

[Tiriol]

I further predict the True Finns will be on a leash because they're the new party on the block with little or no actual minister experience in them. They're the third wheel where the other major parties can all on actual experience on how to run a government and can maintain discipline among the officials who work for them instead of being at their mercy at all times. Which is really worrying to me. In these economic times you need people who already know the system, but now we might be dumped with a whole bunch of first time ministers. The only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that the Center party gets to dole out the positions so all the important seats might get someone with experience on them... except financial which look like it will go to Soini... and that is not a good thing.

-Gunhead

Much depends on Sipilä right now, for several reasons you have outlined above. However, if Sipilä's approach to all government and public functions is similar to how he handled the vaunted social contract negotiations, there might be troubles ahead.

Soini as finance minister would be a tragedy and a comedy in the making all at once. While I actually think that Soini himself is capable, he would be under inhumane pressure to please the True Finns voters and to keep up with Sipilä's austerity plans. I can already imagine his sweating face while trying to explain why Greece deserves more bailouts and why it's important to reduce unemployment benefits and their duration to his voters; and how he tries to wiggle out of any EU obligations. Even if he votes against all proposals concerning EU (save for gutting it) and puts it on record that he opposes bailouts, tighter integration, immigration etc., his voters will still not be happy, such a happy bunch of troglodytes they are. If my predictions come true, True Finns will lose a lot of support from all those who voted them out of (mistaken) belief that they are somehow better form of SDP or a true workers' party. Those who stay behind are only interested in immigration policies and general resistance to any international obligations. I might be very, very much mistaken, though, considering my own political beliefs. Only time will tell.

I suspect that "10 billion euros worth of cutbacks" will be reduced somewhat in government policy plans, but I wouldn't hold my breath too much. While Sipilä clearly apes usual commercial negotiations, same tactics don't work as well in public sector and on state level. Punamulta (red soil) supporters in his own party would be horrified if he would enact those austerity measures in full and they will try to pressure him not to do it (and True Finns as well, although their right-leaning wing is getting stronger and stronger), but National Coalition and Centre Party's own right-wing will support him on that.

[Edi]

Just a note, the English version of the name of Soini's party is nowadays the Finns Party, apparently it has been changed at some point. Or the "True Finns" name has been some sort of best-we-can-do-on-a-short-notice effort. There is no good way to literally translate the Finnish name of the party, Perussuomalaiset, to English while maintaining the context intact (it would literally be "Basic Finns" or "Archetypal Finns" or something similar).

What the Finnish name of the party goes for in terms of context is the same as in the saying "American as the apple pie" and in Finnish the word for doing that for anything is the word "perus-" as a prefix. And in most cases it would be translated as basic, such as in basic food, basic tools, etc, but when applied to nationalities, nations etc etc, "basic" just does not convey the context.

Drives me fucking nuts every time I need to try and explain this bit to foreigners. Languages...

[madd0ct0r]

that does add a bit of context, thanks. stumped for what would work more smoothly though. "Finnish Roots" possibly. Fundamentally Finns sounds like a eurovision entry,