Next Sunday Finland is going to elect its next president. According to that country’s observers, these elections are very important, as were all the previous ones, even though the head of state now enjoys far more limited powers than before. The president is only responsible for the foreign policy and security and can only do what parliament will allow. At the same time, presidential candidates, with whom a group of foreign journalists managed to meet last Monday, believe that what is now at stake is further development of the country.
The local press calls the eight candidates vying for the office of president “the magnificent eight,” a clear allusion to a well-known Western, The Magnificent Seven. Three candidates represent the conservative camp: Sauli Niinisto, leader of the National Coalition Party; Paavo Vayrynen of the Center Party; and Timo Soini of the True Finns party. Also taking part in the race are two representatives of the Left – the leader of the Left Alliance, Paavo Arhinmaki, and the former prime minister, Paavo Lipponen, who is running for the presidency as member of the Social Democratic Party. There are two women among those in the race: Eva Biaudet, representative of the Swedish People’s Party, and Sari Essayah from the Christian Democrats party. Besides, the former Green League leader Pekka Haavisto, an overt homosexual, has also joined the campaign.
Public opinion polls show that the clear favorite in these elections is Sauli Niinisto, for whom almost 40 percent of voters are ready to vote in the first round. Keen competition is now on for second place. Literally breathing down each other’s neck are the Green representative Pekka Haavisto and the conservative Paavo Vayrynen, who are supported by 8.3 and 8.2 percent, respectively.
The leader of far right party True Finns, Timo Soini, can count on a somewhat poorer result – 7 percent. So it is not ruled out that only the conservatives will be competing in the runoff, which has not occurred for a long time in the history of presidential elections in Finland.
Formerly, a runoff used to consist in competition between the Right and the Left, the conservatives and the socialists, a man and a woman. This year, a representative of the fairer sex is not expected to go through to the second round, let alone be elected president. Evi Biaudet and Sari Essayah enjoy the support of 2 and 1 percent, respectively. The same applies to the Left. Surveys show that only 5 percent of the voters are ready to vote for the former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen.
Besides, the polls show that the results gained in last April’s parliamentary elections will not transform into the support of candidates. This is especially evident on the example of Timo Soini, whose party won 20 percent of the votes but who himself has only a 7-percent support now and thinks that the situation will clear up in the last week because a third of the Finns have not yet decided who to vote for. Incidentally, Soini explained this result to journalists by the fact that many of his followers do not want to vote for him, fearing that he will abandon the party. The point is the Finnish president should not belong to a party.
Timo Soini’s slogan is “Less Europe, but Better Europe.” Like most of the Finnish candidates, he opposes the federalization of Europe but emphasizes the necessity to strengthen cooperation in Europe. Incidentally, Soini believes there should be no place in the European Union for such countries as Greece but, at the same time, he does not oppose EU enlargement and the accession of Ukraine if the latter agrees to lose a part of its sovereignty.
The left-wing electorate, which used to vote for the current President Tarja Halonen, seems to be in two minds over who to vote for. For how else can one explain the so low 5-percent support for Lipponen, whose party won much more votes in the parliamentary elections? This may be put down to the fact that the ex-premier has already quit politics and no longer holds an influential office. Incidentally, he explained his intention to take part in the campaign by being worried over the alarming trends in the country, which emerged after the last year’s parliamentary elections, such as focus on domestic problems, discrimination of the minorities, and proposals of some candidates to leave the eurozone. Paavo Vayrynen is also favoring the return of the markka. “I am a realist,” said Lipponen who took part, as prime minister, in introducing the euro, “and I think our future depends on the EU, while the euro is the pillar of the European Union.”
The former premier also emphasized that the True Finns should not determine the agenda in the country. In his words, the EU played an important role for Finland in its relations with Russia. “The ‘true Finns’ leader does not recognize values. Besides, the president should demonstrate that the Finns favor tolerance,” Lipponen said. In his words, Finland needs to be more internationalized and attract more international experts and foreign entrepreneurs.
Commenting on the presidential race leader Niinisto’s statement that the Finns should vote the way they feel, Lipponen said that voters should vote strategically, with due account of whether one can and wants to cope with the job of a president, has a capacity and international leadership experience for this.
Telling about his vision of resolving the eurozone crisis, the ex-premier stressed that the decision should not be postponed and the main role in this case should be played by a strong central bank, while the EU must pursue a true economic policy.
“If we had a strong economic union, there would no crisis,” Lipponen affirms. At the same time, he opposes a federalized Europe.
He made rather a strange conclusion that the eurozone crisis had resulted from the lack of leadership among the Center Right, although it is common knowledge that this occurred when the Socialists ruled in both Greece and Spain, where the Right has now come to power.
Meanwhile, Eva Biaudet believes that the ongoing presidential campaign has shown that there have long been no political debates in the country: moreover, Finland has shown no reaction to political statements from anybody, including the talented Soini who hold a master’s degree in political science. “We have not discussed for a long time such things as democracy, equality, and tolerance, which a considered as given. Therefore, the country will benefit from the current debates,” she maintains. In her words, the candidates have not yet shown their true colors in the course of the campaign. “Niimisto, who will go through to the runoff, is very calm now. But he will begin to speak then,” Biaudet believes. In her opinion, Vayrynen, who has repeatedly been returning to politics, can also go through. Yet she adds that people now want to see new politicians and new faces.
Interestingly, Pekka Haavisto, a candidate who knows how to debate, failed to recognized Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the 20 photographs which journalists of the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat showed him.
As is known, the NATO topic is in fact absent from the current campaign. As the Finnish TV journalist Pasi Tuohimaa explained, the reason is that NATO is not a popular point in Finnish debates and it would be a political suicide for candidate to touch this subject. At the same time, The Day’s interlocutor added, 70 percent of the Finnish military would support joining this military and political bloc. In his words, what recently caused quite a stir was a statement by Gen. Ari Puheloinen, Chief of the Finnish Armed Forcers General Staff, that Russian troops are able to occupy Finland in a matter of two days. As is known, EU membership provides no security guarantees, and the EU does not have an analogue to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which considers an attack on a NATO member state as an attack on the organization.
The main contender for the office, Niinisto, thinks that candidates are trying today to position themselves as the staunchest opponents to NATO membership and strong critics of the EU. Conversely, as Erkka Railo from the Parliamentary Studies Center at the University of Turku notes, his criticism in this case is finding a positive response from both Euro-skeptics and EU supporters. The former are backing Niinisto because they know that he was minister of finance when Finland joined the eurozone. He is respected for having the courage to say “No” whenever there were no funds for a certain program. The latter are backing Niinisto for criticizing in no uncertain terms the measures and mechanisms for settling the Greece crisis. Besides, Niinisto is now saying he would not join the EU in the current situation.
Railo believes the results of these elections will send a clear signal to politicians. In his view, the Finns will in all probability be less inclined to give money to bail out Greece and Portugal.
