Finnish News Recap, Week 18: Zelensky in Finland Edition

ZELENSKY IN FINLAND: On May 3, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a quick visit to Finland, meeting with the Finnish president. Zelensky also met with other Nordic leaders and continued to Netherlands after this visit.

Finland announced a new package of military aid. Zelensky made some jokes about airplanes, referring to Ukraine’s well-publicized wish to get fighters and soon-to-be-ex-PM Sanna Marin’s comments during her past visit to Ukraine, interpreted by many to be a promise to deliver such fighters – but no fighters were promised, at least just yet. Finland and the other Nordics did promise to facilitate Ukraine’s accession to NATO, though still leaving the actual timeline rather fuzzy.

To many commentators, though, most concrete aspect of this trip that it was a snub to Russia, in a way unheard of previously Finnish foreign politics. Perhaps as a response, Russia sent an ultimatum regarding an “attack on the Russian consulate” in Aland (apparently a beer bottle).

In the past an ultimatum from Russia would have been major news in Finland, now it’s considered a nothingburger – even compared to other Russian actions, like the seizure of Finnish state-owned company Fortum’s properties in Russia in late April.

Meanwhile, some debate concentrated on Marin not being invited to Niinistö’s formal summit with Zelensky. While it is hard to imagine what exactly Marin – the ultimate lame duck – would have concretely brought to this event, this was still interpreted as a snub. Whether one thinks this snub was good or not, of course, depends on one’s view on Marin.

However, the question of the roles of the President and the Prime Minister goes back decades, ever since the Finnish President’s powers started being constitutionally reduced. The current President Niinistö, buoyed by his public approval, is just now implicitly taking some of those powers back.

The lack of Marin at Niinistö’s summit reflects a longstanding “two-plate problem” – there cannot be two leaders representing the same nation in summits where other nations are each represented by one leader.

PUBLIC BROADCASTING DRAMA: The governmental negotiations between the parties forming PM-designate Petteri Orpo’s next government – the neoliberal National Coalition, the right-wing populist The Finns Party and two smaller parties, the Swedish People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats - started formally last week. Of course, efforts have taken place behind the scenes for a long time, preceding the election.

The negotiations involve eight groups of politicians and others from these parties first negotiating the main specifics of the deal, chiefly the economic matters, and then a larger number of subgroups banging out the actual program.

Before the coalition was announced, it was widely surmised that The Finns Party would be the weakest link in the negotiations and the one most likely to storm off in a huff. This has not happened… yet. It is still unclear what the actual likelihoods of happening are, but some indications exist that certain sectors of the party are unhappy.

The Finns Party’s deputy leader Mauri Peltokangas got some attention by (implicitly, but very obviously) ranting about the liberal, minority-oriented Swedish People’s Party, the Finns party’s biggest opponent within this planned government, being a part of the negotiations. After SPP, another candidate for potentially breaking off from the government negotiations, complained, Orpo promised that there would be new efforts to increase trust within the potential coalition.

However, bigger waves were made by *another* deputy leader, Sebastian Tynkkynen, who demanded that Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, a longtime target of the Finns Party and Finnish right, should not only have budget cuts but that the government should have more powers to set its programs, and attacking Orpo for promising to leave the programming up to Yle. While FBC is state-funded, this happens through a specific tax earmarked to FBC, and FBC prizes is journalistic independence, so this led to a fair amount of criticism.

One specific target of Finns Party attacks was “Pillupäiväkirjat” (“Pussy Diaries”), a feminist series about women’s sexuality – which cost only 2500 € to make, but still serves as an illustration of what sort of programming the Finns Party, specifically disdains. Tynkkynen taking this issue up so directly actually lessens the chances of FBC being cut, as National Coalition, whose right wing also dislikes FBC, could have implemented the cuts simply as a standard, “non-political” budget measure, had The Finns Party not made it all explicitly political.

Of course, beyond this drama, the Finns do have at least one valid complaint. The National Coalition has monopolized all the chairmanships of the main tables, and according to reports, the papers discussed in the groups and the subgroups have been drawn up at National Coalition’s offices. It is evident that Orpo intends to run a tight ship to get the result he wants – a right-wing, neoliberal government that concentrates on austerity, deregulation, and pro-business policies.

Some of this acting up might thus just reflect the Finns Party feeling the neoliberal straitjacket setting in as a condition to their entry to government. Or it might just reflect the general inexperience of a populist party more used to making videos about owning the libs on social media than engaging in hardball negotiations.

Whatever noise the Finns Party and other parties will make will probably be a sideshow – though the European center-left recently portrayed Orpo as the puppet of The Finns Party leader Riikka Purra, domestically the relationship is generally considered to be reversed.

In other news, a rapper/gang leader was convicted for the rape of a minor and a ceremony involving a foreign hereditary head of state attracted a large amount of interest, even in Finland.

Image source: https://www.presidentti.fi/en/pictures/nordic-ukrainian-summit-in-helsinki-on-3-may-2023/