Christmas came and went and the new year’s coming, so here’s the last recap of the year.
PISA RATINGS: This one is from the first half of the month; I just forgot it from the last update.
In short, the new PISA rankings – measuring educational achievement – came out about a month ago, and while they are dire for all European countries, Finland suffered a particularly steep drop. Considering how large Finland’s prime position in PISA rankings in the 00s featured in the national consciousness, this is of course considered a huge national blemish on what used to be a point of pride.
Many explanations have been offered, from education cuts to the increased amount of immigrant students to smartphones to various classroom innovations, like open-plan-office style class spaces utilized in some schools. None of these exactly explains the speed of the drop. For instance, while the number of immigrant-background students has risen in Finland, this rise is not steep enough to explain, in turn, the steepness of the fall.
Few concrete suggestions beyond “more money” (which this government is unlikely to issue in sufficient amounts) and “ban smartphones” (already implemented in classrooms!) have been offered. Personally, I believe that this probably reflects trends that can’t be fixed just by fixing the school system; “smartphones” might come the closest – they’re probably even more ubiquitous in the online-obsessed Finnish nation than elsewhere – but they might also be a part of why the PISA scores were good in the first place, which is actually a more interesting a question than why they are dipping now.
COMEDIAN SUED: Iikka Kivi, a comedian who is perhaps more known for left-wing activism than for his actual stand-up comedy chops, has been sued by presidential candidate and Parliamentary Chair Jussi Halla-aho for defamation, for a tweet indicating that Halla-aho is a fascist. Kivi’s comments were made after Halla-aho’s visit to Ukraine, enunciating in English that whatever his accolades related to these trips are, he is nevertheless, as said, a fascist.
It is not particularly common for politicians to sue private citizens for defamation, so this case, however it is decided, would set a precedent. It is of course not uncommon for The Finns Party members, like Halla-aho to get branded fascists – just as they themselves brand their opponents as communists, traitors, anarchists and so on. And, indeed, fascists – Halla-aho himself had called deputy justice chancellor Mikko Puumalainen, a longtime target for the right-wing, a fascist comparable to Oskar Dirlewanger in a blog entry in 2006.
The most recent development is that Halla-aho has sued another figure – Aino Tuominen, a local politician from the Greens. Tuominen has defended herself by stating that she really meant “fascist” to be a neutral descriptor in a tweet that praised Halla-aho for supporting Ukraine.
PRESIDENTIAL RACE: The situation with the presidential race has stabilized, and we know who the candidates will be. A couple of minor anti-NATO/conspiracy-oriented candidates failed to get on the ballot as independents due to a lack of signatures, causing a bit of drama. The strongest of these, old heavy-hitter Paavo Väyrynen who has since been completely marginalized due to his pro-Russia stance, has sued the state to be allowed on the ballot, but with little chance of success.
The race is coming down to Pekka Haavisto (Greens) and Alexander Stubb (National Coalition). Despite one representing a center-left party and one a center-right one, both have been campaigning as centrist liberals, with Haavisto explicitly renouncing the left and answering conservatively to the common election compasses many (most?) Finns use to pick their candidates. Stubb is also taking a more realist route in this campaign, in comparison to his usual neoliberal idealism, such as by stating that when China and America are at loggerheads, Europe might benefit from taking China’s side from time to time.
The one candidate who could make a surprise bid for the second round is Jussi Halla-aho, who has featured in the news a lot lately (due to the above lawsuit, for example), but his appeal is most likely going to be limited outside of his own party circles, and even if he gets on the second round, all the polling indicates he’d face a crushing loss there. The rest of the candidates seem destined for the also-ran category.
DCA TREATY: The most consequential foreign policy news is the signing of the Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) between Finland and United States of America. The countries are already formal allies due to NATO membership, but DCA is a bilateral treaty deepening this cooperation and opening Finnish military bases for American use. In some sources this has been portrayed as the US actually constructing new bases in Finland but considering that one of the locations specified in this treaty is my hometown’s airport (which also doubles up as a military aviation field), I kind of doubt they are going to just tear that down to construct a new base on top of it.
The motivation for this treaty – which grants Americans extensive privileges about their sections of bases, as is the usual custom – for Finland should be obvious; the American troops are meant to serve as a tripwire, something to confirm that if Finland faces a Russian attack America has skin in the game. There is other sort of training synergies, as well. Some localities might hope that American troops might bring in extra commerce – and that the sort of grave problems associated with American troops elsewhere do not turn up.
Russia, naturally, is not happy about this, but then again, there is not a lot of things that Finland has done that Russia would be happy about. Russians have announced they have summoned the Finnish ambassador about this, but Finland has countered by saying that it was Finland who summoned the Russian ambassador about the border situation. The border, incidentally, was reopened and closed soon again for until the next year.
In other news, more strikes have taken place (and will take place), and new population numbers continue to show low births and high immigration.
Image: Fireworks in Helsinki, 2016. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Year_2016_in_the_city_of_Helsinki.jpg
If that really was Halla-aho's intention, he probably should've consulted a competent criminal lawyer first. I mean, as for legal merits, there really shouldn't be a need for another precedent on the relevant questions. ECtHR has been on it for years, and there's a fairly recent decision from the Supreme Court of Finland (referring to the European case law as well) which you could hardly hope to come much closer to the material facts at hand now: https://korkeinoikeus.fi/fi/index/ennakkopaatokset/kko20221.html
Halla-aho is personally familiar with the process leading up to the Supreme Court, should these ever make it that far, so he knows that even if expedited, the cases are not likely to get anywhere near even the appellate court level, or maybe any court, before the presidential election. So I guess he figured it wouldn't hurt to at least try shutting some mealy mouths in the meantime, and I guess that could even succeed to some extent. And I can imagine him being genuinelyu pissed off about Kivi sowing doubts about Halla-aho's *personal* pro-Ukraine stance based on a number of confused crackpots in his party. And for what it's worth, he *was* the only major political figure who took part and sang the song in the very first, small but loud demonstration in front of the Russian embassy in Helsinki right after Russia took control of Crimea, mostly consisting of Ukrainians living in Finland. No surprise there knowing his background, though.