Finnish News Recap, Week 14: Sanna Out, Nato In Edition

SANNA RESIGNS FROM PARTY LEADERSHIP: Newswise, most of the last week was about two topics – the general post-election fallout, including Sanna Marin’s resignation from Social Democratic party leadership, and the finalization of Finland’s membership in NATO.

The biggest post-election question is whether National Coalition, the winning party , will start trying to form a government with Marin’s Social Democrats or the right-wing populist The Finns Party, which was also in opposition during this government period. In both cases they would have to include several smaller parties.

While both models have their benefits and problems from NC’s point of view, many have surmised that the party may be more willing to go with the right-wing option. However, the problem with this possibility might be getting the smaller parties to take part, as the red-green parties have ruled being in government with The Finns right out and the Swedish-speaking minority’s party, Swedish People’s Party, is also uncomfortable with many of The Finns’ positions, such as their opposition to the mandatory teaching of Swedish¹.

The Finns Party has shown some potential for moderating their views, including switching to a more moderate European Parliament group than their previous one, but it still is to be seen how much they will give way in practice.

An alternative government would be the “blue-red” government between NC’s and SDP, a well-trod governmental path uniting the capital with labor to push through “responsible” (neoliberal) reforms with the worst edges smoothed off. Or at least that is the common thinking of those who support blue-red government, which has traditionally included many experts and media types.

Marin’s resignation has thus mostly been interpreted in the sense of making the formation of such a blue-red government easier, as Marin has represented the left wing of her party and has been very confrontational towards the National Coalition. However, the Social Democrats have been quick to clarify that despite this resignation, their stated economic line, which is quite different from NC’s austerity-oriented line, is still in force, so there would still be a lot of gap-bridging to do in either case.

FINLAND IN NATO: So, on Tuesday, Finland officially became a member of the NATO. And… that is it. After a year of bobbing and weaving through this path, it certainly feels like something of an anticlimax. Still, this did not prevent the biggest NATO heads from celebrating the membership loudly in social media, presenting the bottles of champagne and NATO flags they have bought and what have you.

This should, of course, just be a pivot to a more in-depth conversation of what Finland’s role in the NATO is, but considering that the rest of the week was, security-policy-wise, spent on comparable nonissues like the remilitarization of Aland, this does not seem to be forthcoming.

It seems clear that as far as most Finns are concerned, the NATO means that United States (and chiefly just United States, partially United Kingdom) is committed to defend Finland, and this, in turn, means that Finland is safe from war, for ever and ever. The wider perspective of, for instance, what Finland’s responsibilities would be, seems difficult – as is conceiving of the idea where United States, as advocated by many American politicians, just withdraws from the Europe altogether.

In other news, the welfare state continues to have issues in guaranteeing health outcomes and the former editor of country’s newspaper of note Helsingin Sanomat was fined for drunk driving, following a highly-publicized incident at the parking lots of the paper’s offices. Oh, and it was Easter.

1. And by this we mean the mandatory teaching of the other official language to those speaking the another - ie. Finnish to Swedish-language students and Swedish to Finnish-language, a key policy in Finnish bilingualism. However, it is the latter The Finns Party is concerned with, really.