The first round of the Finnish presidential election is on Sunday. There are nine candidates. If none of them get over 50 % of the votes in the first round, the top two advance to a second round, two weeks from now. Currently, it seems like a second round is almost a certainty, though it is still not certain who will advance.
The Finnish president does not have as many duties as, say, the American president, but is not a completely unimportant figurehead, either. The president does have a status as a “values leader” to put forth their views on moral issues, though they are also supposed to be a national unifying figure, a democratically elected monarch. More importantly, they also represent Finland in foreign high-level meetings, such as the summit hosted by the current president Sauli Niinistö between Trump and Putin in Helsinki, 2018. I mean, that summit failed, but it was still a big opportunity for Finland!
In the recent times, the importance of the President is, if anything, heightened, as there’s a possibility the country might be at war within the next presidential term. Even though Finland would now be a part of a military alliance that would have joint command, the next President would assuredly have a role in keeping the nation together and promoting the Finnish cause abroad, Zelensky-style.
Since all the candidates have been playing it safe to present themselves as true successors to Niinistö, the race has been fairly bland. However, in the recent week or so, the race has been getting a bit of new electricity thanks to the rise of right-wing populist Jussi Halla-aho, one of the most notorious politicians in the country. It would be very unlikely to mean he becomes the president. His opponents fear that him even getting to the second round would bolster his anti-immigration, right-wing views in public debate. This has then led to new debates about tactical voting to prevent this, though it’s hard to say if this has led to anything beyond acrimony between other parties.
But it is the best to go through the candidates (there were several more who attempted to get on the ballet, mostly anti-NATO and/or antivaxx types, but they did not get the required 20 000 signatures to do so). They are presented in reverse order according to their current polling support.
HJALLIS HARKIMO (Movement Now)
What would you get if you had a Trump without sense of humor or a monopoly on his signature immigration issue? You’d get this guy, an egotistical millionaire former Apprentice host who briefly joined National Coalition, walked out in a huff due to not getting a post in the government, and organized his own largely ideologue-free party with the anodyne name Movement Now to advance… well, it’s unclear what is even driving him, besides a strong conviction that what Finland needs is him in charge. Now he is running for President, dropping wisdoms read from tabloids a day before in election debates, clearly anguished by his own unpopularity, his project going nowhere.
SARI ESSAYAH (Christian Democrats)
Sari Essayah, the leader of the Christian Democrats and the Agriculture Minister, is the kind of politician that other politicians, particularly from center-right parties, like to praise as sharp, argumentative and generally solid; probably because, since her party has a hard ceiling of 5 % in the polls due to its conservative Christian views out of sync with the secular Finnish society, she is very unlikely to present an actual threat to them. She will not break this ceiling in this presidential election, as there is no reason (foreign policy skills etc. – her most notable view is a pro-Israel stance that is bit too strident even for the pro-Western consensus) to vote for her – expect for the sort of moral leadership that a clear majority of Finns clearly does not want. Incidentally, one might say that Essayah is currently arguably the most important “politician of color” in Finland, as her father is Moroccan, though she’s almost never talked about this way.
MIKA AALTOLA (Independent)
Mika Aaltola is the only truly independent candidate in this race, i.e., not beholden to any party or endorsed by any party. As the leader of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the country’s chief foreign policy think tank, he got fame in 2022 as the country’s chief expert on foreign and security policy affairs. This was maintained by carefully enunciating the recent events of the war while looking handsome. This made him briefly look an attractive candidate for president, until he actually became one, opened his mouth, and started telling his own opinions, which most Finns quickly then considered too belligerent and otherwise weird even in the current heightened atmosphere. Lacking a party structure to maintain support he has then dwindled to almost nothing.
JUTTA URPILAINEN (Social Democrats)
The Social Democrats held the presidency from 1982 to 2012, 30 years in a row, and would usually be automatically a major force in the presidential elections. However, since the center-left vote has been dominated by Haavisto for three presidential elections now, there’s not much room for Social Democrats, and as such they have once again basically thrown a generally relatively competent politician (Urpilainen is a former Finance Minister and the current European Commissioner) out to do her duty for two months, get a few percent of votes and then return to her actual job. Her campaign has shown little interest of her wanting to be a president or believing she could be one, which of course is reflected in her low vote share.
LI ANDERSSON (Left Alliance)
I, personally, voted for Andersson for a simple reason - I’ve been a long-time member of Left Alliance and Left Youth, I know her personally, she was even in my wedding, and even though I no longer belong to the party or really share the party’s views, how could I not vote for someone who was at my wedding? However, she’s not going to be the President – much like Essayah, her party has a hard ceiling (more than 5 %, perhaps 10 %) due to descending from Finland’s Communist Party, and in this election, she’s concentrated on presenting the leftmost currently plausible policy position regarding foreign policy, i.e. not directly opposing NATO but saying she’s opposed to placement of nuclear weapons on Finnish soil and criticizing the DCA treaty between Finland and the US, as well as saying Finland join the countries that demand a ceasefire in Gaza.
OLLI REHN (Technically independent, actually Centre)
If there is one attribute that most would attach to Olli Rehn, a longtime Centre party politician and former European Commissioner, it would be “gray;” if there was another, it would be “boring.” Finnish politics tend to be quite boring as a rule (being boring can often be a winning attribute), but few have the reputation for boringness and milquetoast centrism, even by the standards of his centrist (it is in the name!) party, like Rehn does.
A mildly liberal, pro-European type, his foreign policy opinions (or other opinions) really do not differ from the national consensus at all – but that might be a strength; surprisingly many of my acquaintances from a wide variety of ideological positions, who would not even think of the Centre Party in other elections, have voted for Rehn precisely because they feel that what Finland needs at this specific point is a boring president, someone who absolutely won’t rock the boat at all. If I hadn’t voted for Andersson, it’s quite likely this is the guy I’d have voted for.
Finally, the top three candidates:
JUSSI HALLA-AHO (The Finns Party)
Halla-aho, the former chair of the party and still the ideological influence, is the current Speaker of the Finnish Parliament and the author of any number of controversial quotes (one of which got him convicted of hate speech) and so on. I have written about Halla-aho many times, like here… but in this presidential race he belongs to the same category as all candidates on the most important questions, as his foreign policy views are well within the Finnish consensus and, if anything, more belligerent on Russia than the others.
While many other right-wing populist parties around Europe have taken a pro-Russian view, this doesn’t really apply to the Finns Party, and *definitely* not to Halla-aho, who has a long history of not only being against Russia but a genuine Ukrainophile; before his political career he’s actually been working on university-level study of Slavic languages and, among other things, can speak fluent Ukrainian and Belarusian, as he has done with politicians from those countries.
However, while it is more likely that goes to the second round than Rehn, it is still less likely that he will become the President. He’s got the widest unfavourability of all the candidates (i.e. almost half of voters absolutely won’t be voting for him), and even with the rest, many might suspect he won’t able to provide a sufficiently unifying figure for the people. Others worry that, in the event of a war, a country led by him would be far too easy by Russian propagandists to present as fascist. Still, being elected as the president might not even his goal; rather, his aim is the normalization of his views, and he has quite succeeded in this in many ways throughout the election campaign (and more extensively considering, for instance, how little pushback the Russian border closure has received).
PEKKA HAAVISTO (Technically independent, actually the Greens)
Haavisto, the former Foreign Minister who has been the also-ran candidate for two elections now, started off as a strong favorite. He still has an excellent chance of making it to the second round by once again cornering the center-left vote (as most Social Democrats will vote for him instead of Urpilainen), but will struggle to beat Stubb, the odds-on presidential favorite. One of the reasons might simply be that at this point he comes off as if he believes he is entitled to presidency – he’s fought for it in 2012 and 2018, all the papers wrote about how he’s the favorite, he has all these merits, It’s His Time.
Of course, there are also other reasons why this might not happen. Some conservative folks might still refuse to vote for Haavisto since he is the most well-known gay politician in Finland and in a relationship with a man. Most Finns won’t give a whit about that, but would still not vote for him in the second round (expect against Halla-aho), since he’s a Green. Greens are not currently at the height of their popularity due to their long history of anti-nuclear activism clashing with the current popularity of nuclear energy, or their historical pacifism not being in tune with the post-February-22-2022 pro-military attitudes.
Haavisto has tried to change these views through considerable amounts of pandering (such as demanding to close the border before the government did during the present border crisis), but still cannot get support from besides what has been called the “red-green bubble” – roughly 33 % of the population. We will see if – presuming he loses – he will continue running in the future elections; there is already a former foreign minister who has reduced himself to joke level through repeated quixotic campaigning.
ALEXANDER STUBB (National Coalition)
Finally, the odds-on favorite. Stubb, a former prime minister who has held a number of other high posts, is a well-known quality in Finland and abroad, the sort of a figure who has in the past even been mentioned as a potential European Commission president; some have questioned if he even wants the presidency, since it might represent a downgrade to his ambitions. However, he has been gunning for the post, and one of the signs is that he has self-consciously made himself more boring by wearing conservative clothing in interviews and talking in a simplified style; as said with Rehn, being boring is a positive in Finnish politics.
While Stubb is a garden-variety neoliberal by politics, a right-winger of the sort who will wave a rainbow flag rather than a national flag while making cuts, one distinguishing feature is that he’s probably the most “European” figure in Finnish politics in the very meaning of the word; it can well be questioned if he should even properly be understood as Finnish by nationality, rather than a Finnish and Swedish speaking citizen of a (yet-to-be-formed) European Federation.
This is not a particularly common viewpoint in Finnish politics. While Finns are moderately pro-Europeanism is still a no-no, but it’s not even properly understood, leading to Stubb making a number of surprising statements from a Finnish perspective, like saying that Ukraine has already won (considered almost flirting with the idea of an non-advantageous peace treaty) or saying that Europe should in fact not automatically support US in US/China spats, though it should support it most of the time – again, probably a pragmatic idea from a wider European point of view, but also one that doesn’t quite fit the current Finnish dogma of loyal obedience to US in all matters.
Anyway, whatever Stubb says and does, he’s still well-known, a good speaker, the sort of a guy who is electable simply because the media has worked for ages to make him electable, so he’s the most probable new president. We will probably know for sure in two weeks,
It really feels like an end of an era when Paavo Väyrynen, an MP (or MEP) for five decades and a minister in eight cabinets (and a presidential candidate in 1988, 1994, 2012 and 2018), has fallen to the category of "several more who attempted to get on the ballet, mostly anti-NATO and/or antivaxx types".
I don't know if this is too much of a personal thing to ask you on a forum this public, but what you wrote about Olli Rehn somehow reminded me of what *might* be an extensive similarity in my personal trajectory in terms of my world view, maybe partly relating to just being of roughly the same age (I believe) and growing up within a broadly similar cultural milieu, later having kids, taking on responsibilities etc., but in part also ending up in some peculiarly specific places at the same time, such as close to the Orthodox church, although with you I don't know how exactly. Anyway, if (and to the extent) you feel this is not the proper place and/or time to share something like this that you maybe consider a personal or private thing, please feel free to ignore this or keep it on a level comfortable enough for you. Maybe you could choose to approach this through two slightly different emphases or degrees of generality (e.g. opting only for the first): first, telling about your journey *away* from the "the Left" and towards maybe something more heterodox, wholesome or different in some other way, or alternatively, telling basically the same story but, especially with the latter part, going deeper and more personal up to ultimately how you took on to live a life of religion and the reasons for doing this as a member of this particular church.
As for me, should you want to know (although we don't know each other IRL, and me hiding behind this pseudonym makes this kinda dumb):
I've been an Orthodox practically from the get-go, getting it from my mother, so in that sense it's not an entirely recent development. I'd say I've always had a respectful and at times more curious but mostly just quite neutral attitude towards it. Had someone asked about it regularly after age 12 or so, I would've said I was an atheist, but there have been periods where I've more seriously tried to get deeper into the theology, i.e. not just interpreting Jesus as a model and teacher in the secular moral sense or something like that, but developing my own interpretations and at times supposedly even being able to interpret and justify some near-dogmatic positions in a sensible way, mostly by understanding the symbolism-heavy stuff and the ever-present argumentation-by-mysticism as a sort of (convention of) language for speaking about things human words and logic cannot fully convey — an issue that became generally easy for me to grasp in a much "fuller" way after I was drawn (by curiosity and the long-present interest for the sublime) into dabbling with various psychedelics alone and with a few select friends in the liminal age of entering into early adulthood, ultimately going through a couple of the most meaningful experiences of my life at least so far. After those, I wasn't yet drawn so much towards any organized religion, but it certainly made me better understand that aspect of spritual practice and religious life, and the importance of having some well-established contexts and ways of integration as well as advice available for instances, especially with such potent mind-manifesting agents, where the users typically have no prior religious, spiritual or secular framework for interpreting, integrating and embedding in their lives what are potentially profound experiences, or even the most primitive shared language for communicating with others about and making efforts to express the "inexpressible".
As for the left-wing tendencies: In my youth, I wasn't formally part of any left-wing party, or movement, for that matter, save for the occasional demonstration and the like, such as the big one in Helsinki — by modern-day Finnish standards, at least — against the Iraq War in 2003. Yet I would've then described myself left-wing for sure, even "counter-culture" in general attitudes and inclinations, despite of my early openness or ambivalence toward many typically almost "non-lefty" interests among my general interests in (deep) history and human behavior, like evolutionary biology, ancient genomics, behavioral genetics, even all the way to the battles around the rise of evopsych and the even older but still continuing culture wars within social science, etc.
Today, I think I have even a harder time to classify myself in terms of religious belief and political stances.
I sure don't want to describe myself an agnostic: I'm afraid people would think of me as a simpleton of sorts, speculating on the unlikely empirical existence of the spaghetti monster or whatever, an in-this-world, part-of-this-world "being" in a necessarily physical sense, not God in the same metaphysical understanding as, say, David Bentley Hart (who I've only recently started reading, though). "Spiritual but not religious", in turn, is a dead-giveaway of the kind of new-agey vibe-surfer ultimately doomed to solitude and separateness along with some random collection of experiences and half-assed ideas without a rigorous framework of common, accumulating and robustly passed-on knowledge, that is, culture and cultural evolution, which also happens to be the secret of the success of our species.
Politically, I'm still "instinctively" a leftist: I just can't often stand your average right-winger, although I must admit I do have a soft spot for thoughtful, not overtly moralizing conservatives. But the current left and most liberal tendencies, too, extending to the adjacent mostly Gen Z cultural and identity games, feel ever more alien and counterproductive when they just further drive the political polarisation (including by gender) and in their part the closing off of the (often mixed-gender!) shared spaces of mutual understanding, acceptance, fun-having and self-moderation that were often still there to be found in my youth, which kind of seemed to moderate and prevent the radical escalation of people's political world views, and which I still see as advantages of a small and uniform enough nation, assuming they're not completely beyond preservation.