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The Swedish People’s Party has, against the predictions of many opinion polls, won a seat in the European Parliament. Carl Haglund, 30 years old and the current State Secretary for Culture Minister Stefan Wallin (SFP), topped the SFP vote and will take the party’s seat.
SFP won 6,1% of the national vote with over 101 000 votes, an increase of around 6 800 votes compared to 2004, an election in which the turnout was higher. SFP took the 13th seat of Finland’s 13 seats and came close to taking the 12th, in what must be considered a very good result for the party. The standing between SFP’s candidates was also close. The party ran 20 candidates with no designated main candidate. For the first time, Åland’s main candidate stood on the SFP list – a factor that was very much of help to SFP. SFP won almost 90% of the almost 10 000 votes cast on Åland.
The other established parties performed badly. The three biggest parties, Kokoomus (National Coaltion), Centre and the Social Democrats all lost one seat. The Left Alliance has fallen out of the EU parliament, losing its one seat. The Greens did well, winning an extra seat to take them to two MEPs.
The populist right-wing True Finns party, in a voting league with the Christian Democrats, saw party leader Timo Soini win the most personal votes of any candidate, 130 432.
Election results in full can be found on Yle’s website: http://yle.fi/val/resultat/2009/eu/index.html.
Pictured, SFP chairman Stefan Wallin and newly elected MEP Carl ‘Calle’ Haglund.
Elections to the EU parliament are underway with polling stations in Finland open until 20.00 this evening. The official result, however, will not be known until 22.00, as according to regulations, member states must wait until all polling accross the EU is over.
It remains to be seen as to whether SFP, the Swedish People’s Party, will manage to hang on to a seat in Brussels. Finland’s total number of MEPs has fallen one from 14 to 13, making it a tighter race. Opinion polls in the run up to election day gave mixed readings. However, opinion polls do generally underestimate SFP support as they most often conducted only in Finnish. Additionally, Swedish-speaking Finns tend to be more active voters in the real election, something that is not taken into account in opinion polls. In SFP’s favour in this EU election is that for the first time the most popular candidate on Åland (Britt Lundberg, a member of Åland’s Centre Party) is standing on SFP’s list. The votes of the Ålanders could be the critical factor in returning an SFP MEP. Another factor in SFP’s favour is that foreign minister Alexander Stubb (Kokoomus, National Coaltion party) was a candidate in the last EU election – it’s likely he won considerable numbers of Swedish-speakers’ votes, especially in the Helsinki area. They will now be looking for someone else to vote for. Should SFP succeed, it seems likely to be Carl Haglund (state secretary for Stefan Wallin) or Björn Månsson (until recently leader writer at Hufvudstadsbladet) who will take the seat. One thing is for sure, the only way to ensure one’s vote goes towards electing a Swedish-speaker is to vote for SFP.
Another interesting result will be to see how well Timo Soini and his True Finns do. It is not unthinkable that Soini could win the most personal votes in the country. This must be of considerable embarrasment to supporters of the Christian Democrats who are in a voting alliance for this election with the True Finns. Christian Democrat voters may well have stayed home in the realisation that a vote for a Christian Democrat will help the borderline racist True Finns. A somewhat unholy alliance.
Pictured: SFP’s EU parliament candidates
Two Swedish-speaking girls employed by the Soldier’s Home at the naval base in Obbnäs (Upinniemi in Finnish) in Kyrkslätt (Kirkkonummi) municipality received orders from their manager not to speak Swedish between themselves, according to a report in this morning’s Hufvudstadsbladet.
The paper reports that the incident occurred during the middle of June this year. One of the girls no longer works at the Soldier’s Home but the other is still there. Both are teenage upper-secondary school students.
According to the girls, they received on several occasions an order not to speak Swedish to each other in front of customers, which they regarded as embarassing. Both think it is tedious that as two Swedish-speaking Finns they should be forced to speak Finnish with each other. With customers, they always spoke Finnish.
The older colleague who made the instructions insists that she did it in a separate room away from customers. According to her, it’s not polite to speak Swedish and Finnish-speakers can become upset if they hear it. That Swedish is one of the country’s official languages is of no regard, according to her.
The head of the Solidier’s Home in Obbnäs, Raili Pursi, told Hufvudstadsbladet that the older colleague has now herself received instructions that she may not make demands regarding the Swedish language in the future. He told the paper, “Naturally, Swedish-speaking employees may speak their native language. Anything else is unacceptable.”
Soldier’s Homes are places run by the independent association ´Sotilaskotiliitto-Soldathemsförbundet ry/rf´ which is not a part of the defence forces. They are placed at military bases and are places for soldiers to spend their leisure time at, with cafeteria and games facilities etc.
Image: The Soldier’s Home in Dragsvik – where it is definitely allowed to speak Swedish, both between the staff and to the customers!
My respect for Justice Minister Tuija Brax (green) grows almost every time I read or hear about her. As reported earlier, she has previously demonstrated her understanding of the needs of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland.
Now Brax has addressed the matter of the Sami people in Finland. She was speaking at the Forum for Human Rights at the parliament yesterday where she said that she considered that the rights of the Sami have been handled poorly in Finland. The chairman of the Sami Assembly Pauliina Feodoroff thanked Brax for finally admitting, as a person in a high position, that the state had dealt with Sami questions inadequately.
Finland has been criticised for not signing up to a convention that recognises the Sami as indigenous people. Brax stated that this matter will be taken up during the present government period. She also stated the government will approve the Nordic Sami Agreement this year. The agreement would pave the way for annual joint meetings of the Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian ministers responsible for Sami matters together with the chairmen of all 3 countries’ Sami assemblies. The agreement also make a proposal for minimum standards of rights in connection to the Sami language, culture and society.
According to the Central Statistics Office, 1 777 persons have declared Sami as their mother tongue in the population registry (as of 31.12.2007). The number of Sami is likely to be higher than this however as you can freely choose which language (Finnish/Swedish/Sami) you register as your contact language with the authorities. Wikipedia states that there are around 6 000 Sami in Finland.
The image is the Sami flag, adopted in 1986.
