You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Karleby' tag.
Finland’s highest circulation newspaper, the Finnish-language Helsingin Sanomat (HS), has published an editorial in which it states that the concerns of Swedish-speaking Finns over their rights are justified.
HS states in its leader that the last few years have seen an increasingly tougher climate for Swedish in Finland, primarily as a result of three reasons; an increase in hateful views on Swedish-speakers and Swedish in Finland on a number of internet-based discussion sites, a new generation of politicians who often no longer speak Swedish fluently and a view amongst many politicians that larger institutional units are as effective as small ones. The paper names Helsinki’s recent forced annexation of a significant part of western Sibbo (Sipoo), the decision to close down the maternity ward at Ekenäs hospital, the reform of court districts, the reform of the police’s administrative districts, the attempt to get bilingual Karleby (Kokkola) to join the unilingual Oulu state administrative district against its city council’s will, and the recent proposal for bilingual schools in Esbo (Espoo) as examples of recent policy decisions that cause harm to Swedish-speakers’ rights. The newspaper states that these decisions show that the right to receive services in one’s mother tongue has been relegated to secondary issue when decisions are made.
HS’ editorial states that Swedish-speaking Finns can be a part of the reason behind the change in attitude towards Swedish in FInland. The leader column states that “Swedish-speaking Finns have had a defensive attitude towards their linguistic rights. This has strengthened an understanding amongst Finnish-speakers that Swedish-speakers want to isolate themselves and are inflexible.”
However, HS goes on to state that is is hard for persons belonging to a linguistic majority (i.e. Finnish-speakers) to understand how things seem for a minority group that are constantly concerned about their cultural identity and rights.
Helsingin Sanomat states that is is time for decision-makers to take the rights of Swedish-speaking Finns seriously. The paper underlines that Swedish-speaking Finns are as Finnish as Finnish-speaking Finns and notes that the cultural roots of Swedish-speakers in Finland go back as far as the start of Finnish history.
Helsingin Sanomat’s leader is a welcome contribution and hopefully will provide a welcome call to Finnish-speaking decision makers and civil society who may not even have noticed how recent actions have effected the Swedish-speaking population. For Finland’s bilingualism to work, it needs champions in Finnish-speaking society and amongst Finnish-speaking politicians. We Swedish-speakers can not make it work on our own.
At the same time, the fact that the issue has become so clearly visible even on the radar of the leader pages of Finland’s most influential newspaper reveals just how serious the language climate is right now. We must hope that there are Finnish-speaking politicians, including those in the government, who have read this article today and have realised that constitutional rights must be upheld in order to ensure our law-based society continues to develop hand in hand with the values of fairness.
The twist over whether the town of Karleby (Kokkola) will align itself with Uleåborg (Oulu) and Lappland as part of the future regional administration reforms continues. The Centre party dominated provincial council of Mellersta Österbotten (Central Österbotten), of which Karleby is the biggest municipality, has voted to align the entire province northwards. The majority of politicians in the town of Karleby itself (although not Centre) are of the opinion that Karleby should be a part of the Vasa region. This issue is of particular importance to Swedish-speakers in Karleby who would have little chance of obtaining high quality services in Swedish from an administration based in the unilingual Finnish-speaking north.
The Centre Party’s dogged insistence that Karleby’s future lies northwards again shows their complete disinterest (and even hostility) towards safeguarding the legal rights of Swedish-speaking Finns. It again shows their lack of respect for municipal democracy, as we’ve seen before in the case of strongly bilingual Sibbo (where Centre supported the annexation of a significant portion of that municipality by Helsinki against the Sibbo residents’ wishes). Now it seems that Centre cares so little for the interests of Swedish-speaking Finns, even their own party’s Swedish-speaking district has appealed to ministers of rival parties to ensure that when the cabinet take their decision on Karleby’s future, they choose the southern option. According to a report on Radio Vega, the Swedish-speaking Centre district has appealed to the National Coalition party (Kokoomus) minister Jyri Häkämies (who sits on the ministerial working group that handles regional administration matters) side-stepping their own Centre minister Mari Kiviniemi who is the actual lead on this issue as Municipality and Regions minister. Quite extraordinary.
With this in mind, one has to ask what the point of a Swedish-speaking Centre district if it can’t achieve even influence within its own mother party. This seems to prove the thesis that it has only been set up in order to try and win votes for the Centre party from a new sector of the population, rather than to actually represent Swedish-speaking Finns in politics. One must wonder when the Swedish-speaking district’s chairman, the controversial Peter Albäck, will realise this; that he and his district’s members are being used by the Centre party.
The ministerial working group handling Mellersta Österbotten and Karleby’s future, and that of around 13 000 Swedish-speaking Finns in the region, will meet tomorrow.
The old phrase seems to be still accurate. Karleby’s future as part of Österbotten seems to have been put into doubt by the Centre party.
The city of Karleby (Kokkola), for centuries an intrinsic part of the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, has voted to cooperate in a northerly direction with the Oulu region in the future. The alternative southern direction towards Jakobstad and Vasa was defeated.
The vote went on the smallest possible margin, 6 to 5. The representatives of the Social Democrats, Left Alliance, Christian Democrats and Swedish People’s Party all voted for an orientation southwards.
All 5 Centre party delegates voted for a northern orientation. They were joined somewhat last minute by the single National coalition party – Kokoomus representative (ironically, another party that has made recent noises that it wants to ‘represent’ also Swedish-speakers). This will mean it will likely be practically impossible for Swedish-speakers in Karleby to receive services in Swedish from national authorities covering the Oulu region – which lacks any other municipality with Swedish as an official language. It also breaks the historical links Karleby has always had with the rest of Österbotten.
This orientation makes a mockery of the claims by the recently founded Swedish-speaking district of the Centre party that Centre is interested in representing the interests of Swedish speakers in Finland. It underlines the real reality; they are happy to get Swedish-speaking votes but rather less willing to do anything for Swedish-speaking voters.
There’s been a couple of wrangles over what things should be called in Swedish-speaking Finland in the last few weeks.
Firstly the south-western municipalities of Pargas, Houtskär, Iniö, Korpo and Nagu which are merging to form one district at the beginning of 2009 are having difficulty in coming to any kind of agreement as to what to call their new municipality. There have been numerous proposals. The joint committee of decision makers from the five municipalities originally intended their new municipal name to be Väståboland (West Åboland). However, the quasi-government langauge body ‘The research institute for the languages of Finland” recommended that the new entity call itself Gullkrona. Other candidates were Berghamn, Erstan, Östad, Skärgårdsstad and simply Pargas after the largest existing town. The name Pargas was predictably popular with the Pargas town councillors. However, the others can’t seem to form any agreement. The latest suggestion is Havskrona.
The Finance Ministry has clearly got fed up with waiting to hear what the new archipelago municipality will be called. This week it announced that the district has a maximum of 2 more months (until mid-June) to settle the issue otherwise it will impose a decision upon the new municipality. If this should happen, it would be the first time that a municipality has failed to be able to agree on what it should call itself.
The other name debate that has been raging has been in northern Österbotten. There, the daily newspapers Jakobstads Tidning and Österbottningen are merging to form a single paper from 23 May this year. The papers are centred in the two towns of Jakobstad and Karleby (Kokkola), who are traditionally local rivals. Last month the newspapers’ board announced that the new merged newspaper would be called “Norra Tidningen” (“The northern newspaper”). This was met with uproar by the readers of both newspapers, who wrote into the paper’s letters section wondering if they were now living in Lapland. Additionally, the proposed abbreviation “Norran” does not come off the tongue well in the dialects of Österbotten – plus it’s already in use by the Swedish newspaper Norra Västerbotten. So, after continued pressure from the readers (and even a few politicians), the newspapers’ board relented and gave their readership the option to vote between three options; ‘Norra Tidningen’, ‘Nya Österbotten’ (“New Österbotten”) and ‘Österbottens Tidning” (“Österbotten’s Newspaper”). It was announced this week that Österbottens Tidning had won the day convincingly. Something that even the residents of Jakobstad and Karleby could agree on.
Newspaper image copyright Jakobstads tidning/HSS Media ab.
Companies’ fear of language problems and extra inconvenience is the largest obstacle for the employment of foreign students and qualification-holders, not skin colour. That’s what they believe at the Finnish-language polytechnic in Kokkola/Karleby, according to the city’s Swedish-language daily Österbottningen (ÖB). The polytechnic has almost 300 foreign students of 29 different nationalities. There are 7 programmes taught in English within the technology, business economy and healthcare areas.
According to a survey, only 28% of foreign students get a practical vocational training place in Finland. Yet this is an obligatory part of the course for all who study for a degree at a polytechnic.
Foreign students can better prepare themselves by writing their CV according to the Finnish layout style. According to Hannele Teir, who is a department manager at Kokkola’s Finnish polytechnic, language is also a problem – but perhaps more for the companies than the students. All of his students have to study Finnish as an obligatory subject, however companies are often fearful of employing a practical trainee who they may be forced to speak English with when dealing with difficult matters that are hard for the trainee to understand in Finnish. The skin colour question can also not be totally ruled out. This seems to differ in the two major towns in northern Österbotten. In Teir’s experience there is a difference in attitude in Jakobstad, where they are used to dealing with refugees and foreigners, than that in Kokkola (Karleby).
Those companies in the Karleby (Kokkola) region that have taken foreign students as trainees have had good experiences, according to the Karleby Region Development Company KOSEK. KOSEK notes that there are also international companies which use English as their working language situated in the region.
