The Swedish People’s Party (Svenska folkpartiet in Swedish, or SFP for short) is to ponder its own name in upcoming discussions on renewal as part of the ongoing Kasnäs manifesto process.
The aim of the Kasnäs process is to give SFP a clearer, more definable image and to place it on track to win 10% of votes in national elections. Much of the debate has centred on more clearly presenting the party as Finland’s principle party of liberal values. There is currently no party in parliament that defines itself as principally liberal. SFP’s European parliament member Carl Haglund is leading the Kasnäs process and has suggested that the word ‘liberal’ is somehow incorporated in the party’s name.
According to media reports, uggestions for a new name have included ‘Svenska folkpartiet – Liberalerna‘ (The Swedish People’s Party – The Liberals), ‘Svenska liberala folkpartiet’ (The Swedish Liberal People’s Party), ‘Folkpartiet Liberalerna‘ (The People’s Party – The Liberals), ‘Finlands svenska folkparti’ (Finland’s Swedish People’s Party), or simply ‘Folkpartiet’ (The People’s Party).
Any move away from a name including Swedish would be controversial and potentially dangerous. In seeking out a new source of voters in the form of liberal Finnish-speaking Finns, the party may well alienate its core bloc of voters – Swedish speakers. I feel it is extremely optimistic for those in the party advocating a change to hope that they can both appeal to liberals regardless of language group and maintain the current level of support amongst Swedish-speakers simultaneously.
SFP has always, by necessity, been a broad church, even if the liberal-wing has perhaps had the largest following. Swedish-speaking Finns are by no means a homogenous group. Just as amongst Finnish-speakers, there are farmers, town dwellers, factory workers, bank-owners, entrepreneurs and everything else in between. Certainly not all of these are traditional liberals. However, they do all share the common requirement to have a voice in the Finnish politics that speaks up for the rights of the Swedish language and those that wish to live through it. Emphasising one political ideology as more important than the party’s Swedish nature is not the way to electoral success.
That said, SFP does face a real challenge. Increasingly, Swedish-speaking Finns are more and more bilingual in the way they live their lives. For many in the larger towns of southern Finland, the Swedish-speaking part of their identity is less and less a defining point – or, at least not as important as it was for previous generations. They can get by perfectly well in Finnish, their partner is quite probably Finnish-speaking and thus other political issues than language can more easily sway this new group’s voting intention. In addition to that, the coming voting form (of questionable democratic credentials) will make it harder in the future for SFP to gain parliamentary representation. We Swedish-speakers are finally not decreasing in numbers, but we continue to decline as a percentile proportion of the entire national population (and thus as an electoral force). In such a climate, it is understandable and possibly crucial that SFP reaches out to win more Finnish-speaking votes. The sad reality is that the party may be before too long, as the Americans say, be between a rock and a hard place.
The Kasnäs manifesto, the basis of the Kasnäs process which is looking into how best to redefine SFP for the future, can be read in English on SFP’s website by following this link.
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Saturday 30.1.10 at 5:05
Finlandssvensk
Stupid idea to make a name change. I do not think it will happen though. It will have to be decided in a party conference and I do not think the majority of the members would vote to change it. It’s been the same for more than 100 years. Swedish must continue to be the main priority. We need a party that is proud to represent Swedish in Finland and the Nordic identity that has built this country into what it is.
Sunday 31.1.10 at 9:20
Jonas
I tend to agree that this will not actually happen – at least any time soon. It seems to be an idea pursued by the mainly Helsingfors-based right in the party. If it came to a vote, I suspect that members from non-capital region areas of Nyland, Åboland and Österbotten would vote strongly against any name change suggestion.
Sunday 31.1.10 at 14:23
Rasmus
SU – Svensk ungdom – are also on the liberal side of things and have been pushing for some time for the mother party’s name or at least profile to reflect the liberal.
One thing though, we’ve had explicitly liberal parties in the past in Finland… and how many of them do you see in parliament now? Zero. So, it doesn’t exactly seem to be a vote-winning formula to follow!!
Monday 1.2.10 at 15:10
Martin-Éric
I received an invitation to participate in Kasnäs, because part of their new strategy is to position themselves as THE party of multiculturalism, so they invited the few immigrants who even remotely ever had anything to do with the Swedish community to participate.
Personally, I think that their goal was missed even before it got set, because none of the key figures of the party are of immigrant background. Instead, what we’ve seen in recent times is every goddamn high-profile position having remotely anything to do with immigration or with minorities being granted to a Swedish-Finn.
In case this wasn’t obvious, being born with a silver spoon as a member of the bättre folk has nothing in common with what immigrants go through so, no, being a Swedish-Finn does not qualify someone to ever adequately represent other minorities. Besides, very few immigrants end up integrating on the Swedish side, so SFP’s claims of being THE party for minorities is not just wishful thinking, it’s outrageous bullocks.
Monday 1.2.10 at 16:10
Jonas
Morjens Rasmus
That is indeed a very good point. Explicit liberalism does not seem to have a sizeable ready-made group amongst the Finnish electorate. Trying to gain the ‘liberal’ Finnish-speaking votes at the risk of alienating the non-’liberal’ Swedish-speaking vote is not going to do the party’s electoral results any good at all.
Salut Martin-Éric
Your comments reflect a very Helsinki-biased view of SFP and of Swedish-speaking Finns. I suggest you travel to Österbotten, perhaps particularly Närpes. That municipality has won awards for its successful efforts in promoting integration of immigrants. Also here in my hometown of Borgå, a local Kosovo Albanian member of SFP is often found quoted in the newspaper.
Additionally, the whole sliver-spoon bättre folk stereotype is, I am afraid, very very false. It maybe sums up to a certain degree the Swedish-speaking population in Helsinki – but, that is only around 30 000 of the nearly 300 000 Swedish-speakers in Finland. I suspect the stereotype continues to be used because it is in Helsinki where the majority of Finnish-speakers (and others) come in to contact with Swedish-speaking Finns. And of course, it’s where the majority of Finnish-speaking opinion-makers are based so as to propagate the stereotype.
But of course, you are quite right that none of the leadership of the party are of an immigrant background. This is the case for all Finnish parliamentary parties. Our parliament is 100% Finnish and white. And that is something that we need to work very hard on. SFP did have more than a token few immigrant-background candidates in the last election (to the EU parliament), but of course, realistically their chance of being elected was sadly miniscule.
I am not so sure that I would go as far to describe SFP’s claims to be pro-minorities as “outrageous bollocks”. Astrid Thors has come in for a lot of criticism (and not just from the obvious candidates of the True Finns) for her perceived “too liberal” stance on immigration. If you read the party programme, it is certainly the most liberal on immigration in the Finnish parliament (perhaps alongside the Greens). I also remember a few years ago when Eva Biaudet was still in parliament that a Finnish-speaking member stood up when she was in a debate arguing for the rights of the Sami. He said something like “Why are you even bothering, you are not going to get a single vote from a Sami”, which is of course likely true as SFP has no organisation/candidates in Lappland. So, the fact that she was concerned in pursuing Sami rights is an example that SFP’s claims are not complete rubbish even if they are not always argued for as much as they perhaps should be.
Tuesday 2.2.10 at 1:14
Martin-Éric
Hej Jonas,
Astrid Thors regularly takes the heat not because she is pro-immigration, but rather because her ministry keeps on drafting more legislation that is pro-refugees, at a time when the average Finn would rather see more legislation that is pro-foreign-worker.
I wasn’t implying that political party leaders should be non-Finns. Rather, I was emphasizing the fact that practically every management role in the public sector that has to do with immigration or multiculturalism is held by finlandssvenskare: Thors, Forsander, Huotari, Maula … and probably others that don’t immediately come to mind. The end result is that finlandssvenskare are monopolizing both the multiculturalism debate and also what’s left of the immigration debate after every Somali-hating purfinne redneck has had their say.
As for token candidates, as someone who has been repeatedly approached by four political parties, including SFP (by Eva Biaudet herself, no less), please spare me. I’ve heard too many Finns (purfinnar and finlandssvenkare alike) sheepishly talk of “blissfully ignorant niggers in the picture” who were only being used to put a few colorful faces on the candidate list, without any real intention to ever get them elected, to ever consider being a candidate again, at least not in the Metropolitan area. Please read my recent blog article about this issue, if you feel like learning more.
Wednesday 3.2.10 at 16:42
Just someone in Sibbo
The whole 10% party vision is badly flawed in my opinion. To get 10% of the vote, Sfp would necessarily need to appeal to a large section of Finnish speakers and gain their votes. Swedish-speakers are less than 6% of the population these days. If the party does that, inevitably its main raison d’etre will be compromised as it has to satisfy this new supporter group and presumably as they take a significant number of the decision making roles in the party. If Sfp is suddenly a weakened advocate for Swedish in Finland, then those that value Swedish in Finland will no longer see a reason to vote for it. Swedish Finland would be poorer because of that because we would then lack a major agitator for our rights.
Sunday 7.2.10 at 14:08
Richard
The name-changing idea seems to reflect the growing tendency to place Finland-Swedishness into the mental landscape of the Finns. That would be a blow of death for the minority.
@Martin-Eric
I find it very funny how you project Finland-Swedishness from the Ultra-Fenno nationalistic viewpoint and through the lens of Finnish national inferiority complex. “Bättre-folk”-enunciations were really tasteless at the times when the cultural integrity of Finland-Swedes in serious jeopardy, (followed by the administrative reforms).
How could you expect minorities to have ever receive humane-treatment in Finland when the country does even respect the cultural integrity of its historical, national minorities, and I point the fact, that Finland-Swedes are not a minority like the Somalic-community. Most Finland-Swedes still reside in area’s where they make-up the local majority. That is, Finland-Swedes are highly territory-bounded national minority.
The immigrants in Swedish Ostrobotnia, are perfect example of how the Swedish community in Finland has embraced the immigrants, in Swedish.