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Finland is famous for having being named as the world’s least corrupt country. This has been the result a number of times in recent years of the organisation Transparancy International’s survey. The Finnish media has always liked to trumpet this fact in the way that small countries do (understandably) like to enjoy moments when they are top of the league.

However, the ongoing party election financing scandal demands some serious reconsideration of our position as a land untroubled by corruption.

An interesting article in this morning’s Hufvudstadsbladet (HBL) reveals an interesting perspective on just why Finland is so clean in the eye’s of the transparency index.

According to Superintendent Jenni Klemola of the Central Criminal Police, who has for the last year been involved in a group actively following corruption cases in Finland, the explanation is simple. We simply don’t use the word corruption very much. She explained to HBL, “The difference between Finland and countries in southern Europe is that we talk about failures of duty, bribery and fraud without using the word ‘corruption’. In corresponding cases on the continent, the media would quickly scream out the news as a new corruption case being revealed.”

Klemola clarifies that there is no internationally agreed definition of corruption. Every country can create its own definition. “The word corruption doesn’t even appear in Finnish legislation. It’s also completely missing from party programmes”, she says.

“Transparency Index, which year after year announces Finland as one of the world’s least corrupt nations, does no scientific comparison to reach its conclusion. The measurement of the corruption index is built on expert statements. And because neither the Finnish media or legal system uses the word corruption, the experts draw the conclusion that the phenomenon doesn’t occur here.”

“Court cases that concern fraud, bribery and failures of duty are not considered. But now I’m waiting, with excitement, this autumn’s survey result”.

Kormela believes that that all forms of abuse of power for one’s own gain should be considered as corruption. Kormela goes on to say that “In Finland, the risk of corruption is greater when so many people have multiple positions of power - in politics, business and sport - that they can easily mix up.”

Kormela is suspicious of the entire Transparency Index. She points out that the index shows that Switzerland is side by side with Finland as one of the least corrupt countries in the world whilst many African nations are amongst the most corrupt - yet, many of the corrupt African heads of state almost certainly have their bank accounts in Swiss banks.

Meanwhile…

In other news, Centre party and Kokoomus (national coalition party) have their party conferences in Joensuu and Tampere/Tammerfors respectively over this weekend. The Centre party has perhaps received the most criticism during the election financing scandal.

Centre’s party secretary Jarmo Korhonen, who has been accused of being very much involved with the KMS scandal, defended robustly his position on the opening day yesterday (Friday). He told party delegates that he had been working very hard to get funds for the party - saying he’d been eating sometimes 3 lunches a day and suffering an upset stomach due to drinking so much coffee, all for the good of meeting people interested in donating money to the party funds. This went down well with the Centre party delegates. He claimed that the Social Democrats were the real capitalists, receiving the most financial backing. According to him, Centre also received less money than Kokoomus and were way down in 4th place - “even SFP get more money than us from some fund or other of theirs”.

Many of the delegates assembled in Joensuu blame the “capital city’s media” for blowing up the scandal, according to HBL. The Centre party enjoys the majority of its support from communities in rural, agrarian based Finnish-speaking Finland.

The Swedish Peoples’ Party (SFP) wrapped up its annual conference today in Åbo (Turku).

One of the main issues debated during the weekend was the issue of nuclear power. SFP has previously had an officially negative attitude on the use of nuclear energy. However, with climate change in mind and the need to find solutions to providing electricity without the use of expensive and dirty fossil fuels, the party has adopted a marginally more positive attitude towards the technology.  Delegates voted to describe SFP as “not an active instigator of nuclear power expansion”. Not exactly a glowing endorsement, but the motion supporting this policy line was clearly supported, defeating the alternative proposal that would have described the party as “opposed to an expansion of nuclear energy”. The motion continues to allow SFP’s parliament members to vote according to their own conviction in matters of nuclear energy - clearly allowing critiques of nuclear energy (Ulla-Maj Wideroos being probably the most obvious here) to vote against any future parliamentary measures supporting nuclear energy.

The party conference elected 28-year old Anna Bertils as a new vice party chairman. She replaces Monica Sirén-Aura who stood down. Bertils is from Vörå in Österbotten and was chairman of Svensk Ungdom (Swedish Youth - the party’s youth organisation) between 2005 and 2007. The two other vice chairmen, Sibbo municipal government chair Christel Liljeström and left-winger Nils Torvalds from Helsinki were reelected. German immigrant Gerd-Peter Löcke (who is known for campaigning for more support for immigrants who have integrated as Swedish-speakers) also stood for a vice chairmanship position, but was not successful.  Stefan Wallin, who is the minister of culture and sport in the government, was reelected unopposed as party chair/leader.

Image source: Svenska folkpartiet. You can find more photos from this year’s party conference on their website.

I have neglected this blog during the past week. Mainly because I’ve been busy at the office and that the weather has been so good; my free time has been occupied by putting it to good use. A lot is also on the go in Finnish current affairs. Here’s a quick summary of some of the ‘high’lights of the recent days.

Party funding scandal, Vanhanen’s Centre party in the spotlight

Parliamentarians, but most especially the government and more especially the Centre Party, are in turmoil due to campaign financing scandals. There’s so much to say on this that I can’t possibly manage it in this brief entry. And a new revelation seems to come out every day. Most of the worst news is, as said, surrounding the Centre party and financial grants given by a mysterious organisation called Kehittyvien Maakuntien Suomi (KMS, very liberally translated to “Finnish association for districts under development”) backed by various financiers - mainly businessmen (It should be said that KMS also gave grants to a much more limited number of members of other parties than Centre). There are various stories going about - was KMS founded in the office of the Centre party secretary Jarmo Korhonen? How much did prime minister Matti Vanhanen (centre) know about it? Did KMS money influence decisions made by the politicians who received it? Why is so much secrecy involved? Was it Centre party officials managing KMS’ bank account?

Frankly, it’s exhausting keeping up with it all! But in any case, Prime Minister Vanhanen is looking weakened and this morning’s Borgåbladet even reports that one betting company (Unibet) now thinks there’s a higher chance he will have resigned before the end of June than still be in the job on 1 July. As for now, he’s flown off to do a tour of Asia (where he amongst other things gave a strange speech in Seoul where he drawed upon the similarities of the Finnish and Korean languages). One amusing reader comment on the website of Vasabladet suggested that it might be best if he didn’t fly back. The bad news is that all Finnish politicians are looking less trustworthy amongst the electorate because of this scandal. It’s not good for encouraging the people’s participation in the democratic process when that process looks corrupt and broken. Expect new election financing laws already before the autumn as politicians try to regain the people’s trust.

Jutta Urpilainen is new Social Democrat leader

The Social Democrats elected a new party chairman yesterday at their conference in Hämeenlinna/Tavestehus. Jutta Urpilainen from Karleby in Österbotten becomes the SDP’s first female leader. In the second round of the party’s election, SDP delegates gave Urpilainen 218 votes, defeating former foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja who got 132 (both pictured). The choice of a youthful female leader (Urpilainen was born in 1975) will make it easier for SDP to change its image and present itself as a fresh alternative. Municipal elections are coming up this autumn and with Centre and Kokoomus faring worse (or at least getting worse publicity) in the above mentioned financial scandals, SDP should be looking to a good result. If the economic situation becomes more unstable - even more so.

Sfp party day in Åbo

The Swedish Peoples Party (SFP) holds its annual conference - the ‘party day’ - today in Åbo (Turku), in the shadow of the financing scandal (and indeed SDP’s leadership election). Sfp politicians and delegates will be hoping that they can avoid being tarred with the scandal brush in so much as is possible. KMS only gave money to one Sfp member during the last election campaign. That was party leader Stefan Wallin, who received 10 000 euro. However, he has said this he passed this on to Sfp’s general campaign fund for his Åboland constituency. Sfp has had its own mini-KMS type scandal. It was revealed recently that an almost equally mysterious organisation, Stiftelsen för ett tvåspråkigt Finland (’The Foundation for a Bilingual Finland’) provides a large amount of Sfp’s monetary resources. This foundation sourced its money from business leaders and Svenska kulturfonden (The Swedish Cultural Fund). This has been met with far, far less negative publicity than the KMS/Centre affair, largely because it was no great surprise to anyone that Svenska kulturfonden was providing money to Sfp. It was, if you like, a “well known secret.” When this came to light, Sfp party secretary Ulla Achrén immediately took responsibility for how these funds were shared out within Sfp and to members seeking election. This rather took the heat out of any possible scandal - particularly as her ‘trust’ is harder to call into question, as she is (unlike most other party secretaries in other Finnish political parties) is simply an employee of Sfp - rather than the holder of an elected office.

One of the main issues for this year’s conference will be energy - and in particular nuclear power. The party has indicated, in the context of climate change, that it wants to relook at its negative stance towards the building of further nuclear power stations in Finland. Members are however divided, so a lively debate can be expected.

Sfp will look to recent opinion surveys for a source of optimism; Hufvudstadsbladet reports that they have shown that support for Sfp has significantly strengthened amongst Swedish-speaking young people. It also shows that support from the wider Swedish-speaking population has improved slightly (to over 67%), at the expense of the SDP and Greens.

Swedish-speaking Finns are becoming all the more bilingual. That’s according to the latest trend from the Finland-Swedish Barometer survey.

According to researcher Kjell Herberts at the Institute for Finland-Swedish Future Research, one can read this trend by comparing the latest barometer results with surveys done in the past. In 1950, 46% of Swedish-speaking Finns asked said that they had a strong command of both national languages. According to the most recent research, 82% of Swedish-speaking Finns are of the opinion that they have a strong command of Finnish as well as Swedish. (Although it is apparently hard to make a totally accurate comparison, as the questions were asked differently in 1950 as to more recent surveys, and the question does not necessarily imply that one should be fluent in Finnish to give a positive response).

According to Herberts, the situation for Swedish in Finland is made more difficult by those Swedish-speaking Finns who so easily and willingly switch to using Finnish when accessing services. According to Herberts, it is also the case that the more bilingual one becomes, the easier it is to abandon one’s own language. Herberts, however, does not believe that the existence of Swedish in Finland is threatened in at least the short term.

The latest barometer survey also shows that Swedish-speaking young people are significantly less interested in politics than their Finnish-speaking counterparts. 77% of Swedish-speaking youths said that they were either not at all interested or not especially interested in politics.

So was the title of Björn Månsson’s interesting leader article in this morning’s Hufvudstadsbladet.

Revisiting the issue of a separate European parliament seat to represent Åland (as Åland politicians are demanding) or for the wider group of all Swedish-speaking Finns (as Henrik Lax and some others have raised), the leader article unveils some interesting facts which make the demand not so unreasonable as it might have previously seemed.

Månsson draws the reader to the attention of the case of the German-speaking minority in Belgium. Like Åland, they have their own parliament and effective autonomy in their own region. The German minority in Belgium are around 73 000 people - rather more than Åland (around 27 000) but small compared to the total number of around 300 000 Swedish-speaking Finns. Yet, the German-speaking Belgians are guaranteed their own place in the European parliament. And that’s despite their proportion of the entire Belgian population being only 0,7 %. Swedish-speaking Finns make up around 6 % of Finland’s population; Ålanders account for about 0,5 %. Looking at those statistics, it’s harder to argue against a specific Swedish-speaking mandate.

Månsson goes on to highlight the case of the German-speaking minority in Italy, the residents of South Tirol. They also have, practically, a safe seat in the European parliament. What’s especially interesting here is that this German minority is around 290 000 in number - i.e. more or less exactly the same in number as the Swedish-speaking Finns. Yet, looking at them as a proportion of Italy’s entire population, they comprise just 0,5 % - a percentage that is equivalent to Åland’s share of Finland’s people. Surely then, Åland’s demands for its own seat in the EU parliament are entirely reasonable.

Perhaps it’s not as easy as that. Månsson points out that it’s much easier for Italy to give away one seat to a minority as due to Italy’s large overall population it gets an entire 78 places in the EU parliament. But for Finland, with only 13 European parliament mandates, giving one mandate away to a district of just 0,5% of the people would seem highly inequitable.

So, perhaps Finland should ask the EU for an extra seat to be given to Åland. According to Hufvudstadsbladet, that seems an unlikely option. The EU has thrown that option out of the window for fear of opening a Pandora’s box where all of Europe’s autonomous areas demand their own individual seat. So, perhaps the second option is to give a mandate to the entire Swedish-speaking population. According to Månsson, that could be secured by introducing a requirement for one of Finland’s MEPs to have Swedish as their mother tongue.

For me, a Swedish speaking mandate sounds impracticable. If we were to use the suggestion in this Hbl leader, how would we make sure that the electorate vote in one MEP with Swedish as their mother tongue? If the first 13 people elected all have Finnish as their mother tongue, do you deprive number 13 of his or her seat and install the most popular Swedish-speaker even if they got a lot less votes than any in the top 13? Surely that would cause an outcry - not least in some quarters of the Finnish language press. It would also be impossible to create a geographic voting district - Finnish and Swedish speakers live side by side. Svenskfinland is not a clear cut geographic entity.

In any case, even if there were to be a Swedish-speaking seat created, would the people of Åland be satisfied? As Månsson writes, probably not. There are many people on Åland who don’t even consider themselves Swedish-speaking Finns (finlandssvenskar). For them, they are Ålanders (ålänningar) - and that is a status apart. For them, it’s only direct representation for Åland - and Åland alone - that will do.

Greens in Sibbo (Sipoo) will fight this autumn’s municipal election as an independent association according to a report from Radio Vega Östnyland. Most Green activists in Sibbo have cut their link to the national party because of the Greens’ government ministers stance on the annexation of south west Sibbo by Helsinki. When the matter came up in the government, the Green’s ministers supported Helsinki’s forced take-over of an area of south west Sibbo. This was passed in government by a vote of 8-4. The annexation will occur on 1 January 2009. Previously, around 95% of Sibbo’s electorate had voted against the proposal in a referendum organised by the municipal council. The decisions by both the government and later the high court of administration in favour of Helsinki have been seen by many as an attack against municipal democracy and as a victory of the large over the small. In many letters to newspapers, the annexation has been likened to rape.

After the decision, the Greens lost many members in Sibbo who resigned in protest. The same fate also affected Kokoomus (who are the second largest party in Sibbo’s local council), whose government ministers also all supported Helsinki’s forced annexation. The Greens now face a tough municipal election in Sibbo, with 3 of their 4 councillors stating they will not stand for reelection.

Currently, the Swedish peoples party (Sfp) has 20 mandates in Sibbo. The national coalition party Kokoomus have 10. SDP hold 6, the Greens currently have 4 and Centre has 3 councillors.

The image is from one of the several protests against Helsinki’s forced annexation of south west Sibbo that occurred during 2007.

The Minister of Culture and Sport Stefan Wallin (sfp) has repeated his belief that there should be more women in positions of leadership in Finland.

According to FNB (STT) via Hufvudstadsbladet, the chairman of the Swedish Peoples Party said today that “Women are often higher educated than men and make up almost half of the Finnish labour force. Yet, that’s not seen in leadership positions. In 2006, only around a fifth of all persons in positions of leadership were women.”

Wallin expressed particular disappointment that the percentage of women on the boards of publically traded companies had increased so slowly. Only 12 % of board members are female.

The Minister of Justice, Tuija Brax (green) has stated that she would support a sinking of the voting age (currently 18 ) to allow all those aged 16 years and above to vote. Minister Brax said she thinks this would increase the engagement of younger voters in political matters earlier. Members of other political parties, including some Swedish peoples’ party (Sfp) members and Left Alliance members have also stated this in the past.

Personally, I don’t have particularly strong feelings either in support or opposition to this. I suppose the arguments against a sinking of the voting age would be that younger people tend to be immature and thus could perhaps not be capable of making an informed decision on who to vote for - or that they haven’t grown up enough yet to sufficiently understand their own views. Personally, through having 2 children (and from more or less remembering being one myself!), I think such an attitude is rather pompous and underestimates many 16- and 17-year olds. Frankly, I think there’s probably a lot of people well over 18 who are still rather less mature then many 16- and 17-year olds; in other words, there are people who probably don’t make particularly informed choices long after they celebrate their 18th year.

The only really strong reason to keep things at 18 that I can think of is that 18 is the age of becoming an adult - it’s a marker point for many other things, whether it be drinking, smoking, driving etc. For simple reasons of being uniform and neat and tidy, keeping it at 18 is attractive. Also, you could argue that all the electorate ought to be 18 as they are in theory electing people who will make decisions on things like drinking, smoking, driving. You could, at a stretch, argue that people who are less than 18 shouldn’t be voting to influence decisions on things that the law doesn’t consider them mature enough to engage in yet.

We will see what happens. Certainly, anything that would engage younger people in the political process is worth investigating. As I’ve previously written, I have a lot of time for Tuija Brax. She comes across to me as a very capable member of our government and seems to have a good record in her decision making. Therefore, perhaps her instinct on this matter is also correct.

Finnish politicians, or at least those in the governing coalition, appear to be split on whether or not they should boycott the summer olympic games in Beijing.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (centre party) has made it clear that he will attend the opening ceremony and stay for a few days to watch events with Finns competing in them. He made it clear that he thought that Olympics is a sporting event and not a political one. Vanhanen’s decision has been criticised by all of the candidates for the chairmanship of the opposition SDP. Although, interestingly, it seems that President Tarja Halonen (who is a nominal social democrat, although Finnish presidents resign party membership when elected) will attend.

The Minister of Culture and Sport Stefan Wallin (Swedish peoples’ party Sfp) has made it clear that he will be on his summer holiday during the period of the Olympics, with no further comment, clearly trying to avoid entering into the controversy.

Today, in a prominent difference of opinion with the prime minister, the foreign minister Alexander Stubb (coalition party Kokoomus) said that he wouldn’t attend if he were invited. He did say he thought it would be ok to participate if China began negotiations with the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama. Clearly, Stubb does not share Vanhanen’s opinion that the olympics is just a sporting event.

From both the statements and the actions of the Chinese government, it’s hard to see how the games are removed from politics. The Chinese domestic media’s coverage of the worldwide torch relay has clear propaganda undertones, with the protests that dogged the torch’s progress in places like London, Paris and San Francisco glossed over and choice pictures of the flame with dignitaries emphasised (and often the only pictures shown). The Chinese government were probably hoping to use the Beijing Olympics as the ultimate propaganda tool - a way to make China look great and impressive on the world stage and show their own people that China is popular abroad, with world leaders there sharing in China’s achievement. Their plans for this have horribly back-fired, with it instead focusing the world’s gaze towards China’s human rights abuses. It’s hard not to imagine the Communist party’s top officials cursing over ever applying to host them.

Sport, ideally, should be apolitical. It would be grossly unfair to prevent the athletes from attending and competing at the games. After all, many of them will have spent the entirity of the last 4 years (if not longer) preparing for olympic competition. It would be cruel to deprive them of their chance to compete. However, politicians do not need to be at a sporting event for it to take place. In fact, politicians - who are, to state the obvious, political in nature - give the event a political aspect by their very attendance. People like Vanhanen and Halonen are, after all, not going as private people to spectate. They’re going to represent Finland by virtue of their political roles. So, it’s rather rich for them to suggest there’s nothing political about the games in that context. Thus, I do think they should reconsider their decisions to go. They can send a message to the Chinese regime that they will not endorse a country which is grossly violating human rights by staying at home. Better still, they can use the Olympics as leverage. Tell China they’ll come - but only if China improves its human rights situation markedly and starts talking to the Dalai Lama. This event might be the only opportunity the rest of the world has this much leverage over China for a long time. Perhaps our politicians use take it.

A Pirate Party has now been established in Finland, according to the newspaper Turun Sanomat. The party’s main policy is to loosen regulations surrounding copyright.

The group has modelled itself on Sweden’s longer-established Pirate Party which has the aim of legalising the sharing of materials such as films, music and games via file-sharing services on the internet. According to the law, such activity is at present illegal and a breach of copyright. It must be said, that the Swedish party has not received many votes in Swedish elections since its founding but has had some success in bringing debate on copyright law higher up the political agenda. The Swedish Left Party (which is represented in the Swedish parliament) has said that it now supports an easing of copyright restrictions, so long as file-sharing doesn’t become commercial.

Because I know how much you all like gossip (but of course, would never admit to) - and because I don’t have much time at the moment to write something more intellectual (or at least lenghier!), here’s a picture of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (centre) together with his girlfriend Sirkka Mertala from yesterday evening. They are seen being received by the President of the Republic Tarja Halonen at the annual dinner for foreign diplomats at the president’s palace in Helsinki. It’s the first time they’ve appeared together in public since the Emma Gala (music awards) at the beginning of March.

To bring a glimmer of credibility to this posting, Hufvudstadsbladet reports that President Halonen used her dinner speech to speak on the topic of climate change, international development funding and Finland’s role in the international community. She emphasised the effect of climate change on the lives of women in poor developing countries.

Picture: Lehtikuva/Jussi Nukari via Hufvudstadsbladet’s website

Sacked foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva (Kokoomus national coalition party) has spoken to the newspaper Turun Sanomat about the events that led to his dismissal by his party.

Kanerva criticised Kokoomus party leader Jyrki Katainen for altering his stance over night. Both Katainen and prime minister Matti Vanhanen (centre) has assured that Kanerva had their full trust on several occasions before his sacking. According to Kanerva, Katainen’s decision to fire him undermines Vahanen’s attempts to protect politicians’ private lives and gives a signal to the media that private lives are now fair game.

Kanerva expressed his surprise that his 200 SMS text messages to an erotic dancer have caused such a stir. According to Kanerva, his sacking over such a small affair as text messages is unique in an international context. As an example, Kanerva pointed to the former US president Bill Clinton who was involved in an affair with a low-racked White House worker which he at first denied. Despite this, Clinton stayed in post.

The sacked foreign minister believes that the publication by the gossip magazine Hymy of a selection of his messages is clearly illegal as the constitution guarantees the privacy of all correspondence. However, he has ruled out taking legal action.

Kanerva bitterly said to the newspaper that his life’s work had now gone to waste.

When foreign minister Alexander Stubb (national coalition Kokoomus party) was appointed last week (after scandal hit Ilkka Kanerva’s departure), people wondered how long it would be until Stubb would start talking about his favourite subject, Nato. Stubb has previously been seen as somewhat of a Nato enthusiast.

Well, it seems it hasn’t taken him long at all. In an interview on Yle’s Aamu-tv morning television programme this morning, Stubb claimed that Russia’s stance on any Finnish membership of Nato is unchanged. It’s an opinion that Stubb’s party colleague, the veteran Pertti Salolainen (Kokoomus) who is chairman of the parliament’s international political affairs committee, does not share. Salolainen stated recently that Russia’s opposition on any Georgian or Ukrainian Nato membership would affect Russia’s stance also on Finland. He has said that he thought it would have been easier for Finland to enter Nato without large-scale Russian opposition during Russian president Jeltsin’s time in office. In Salolainen’s view, today’s Russia is again more assertive in its foreign policy concerning its neighbours.

In direct contrast, Stubb thinks that Russia was in fact far more critical of any Nato enlargement in the mid-1990s. He told morning television that he has already had a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart and that he sees Russia as an opportunity rather than a threat. Stubb said that he thought last week’s Bucharest Nato summit showed that the alliance’s European members were gaining in influence.

Stubb said he wants to renew foreign policy debate in Finland by making it more accessible for the public. As part of this he is considering starting blogging during his foreign minister job.

Stubb’s views on where the decision making power lies within Nato can probably be seen as an effort by him to alter the presentation of Nato in Finnish public opinion, where the alliance is often seen as a body dominated by the United States whose confrontational foreign policy is widely unpopular. If such a view on Nato could take hold, it would no doubt be easier to convince people of the merits of Nato membership. It seems Stubb will continue, at least in a small way, to bring forward his positive views on Nato even in his new job.

Finland’s Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (centre party) has ruled himself out of the 2012 presidential election already. Vanhanen told the newspaper Itä-Savo that he doesn’t want to be president and had already experienced one presidential election (the last one in 2006 where he ran and was eliminated in the first round after coming in third place with 18,6% of the vote). Vanhanen did however state that he was aiming for a third term as prime minister.

This leaves potentially both Centre and the Social Democrats without obvious candidates for the 2012 elections, although it is obviously still a long way off and the SDP will get a new chairman this summer.

Their main rivals, the National Coalition party Kokoomus do however have one obvious candidate, Sauli Niinistö. Niinistö came second in 2006 with 48,2% of the vote in the second round against Tarja Halonen. This was a respectable result considering highly popular Halonen got 49,4% in the first round and before that took place, people were tipping the election to be already settled in one round. Since then, Niinistö has been elected to the Finnish parliament in 2007’s election, getting the most personal votes ever in a parliamentary election, and become speaker of parliament. He’s seen to be popular and easily the favourite right now to become Kokoomus’ first president since Paasikivi who left office in 1956. Still, if a week is a long time in politics, 4 years is surely an eternity.

The Swedish people’s party’s  (Sfp) current member of the European parliament Henrik Lax has said that he will not be standing for reelection in next year’s European parliamentary election. Lax, who is 63-years old, justifies his decision to leave the European parliament after one period by saying that he wants more time to relax and take it easy after having spent 40 years in political life, according to the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet.

Lax was elected to the European parliament in 2004 after Astrid Thors (who nowadays is the minister of migration in the national government and Sfp’s Helsinki MP in the Finnish parliament).  He was elected in 14th place out of Finland’s 14 MEP seats. From next year’s election, Finland will lose a place and only have 13 seats available making it all the more difficult for Sfp to be able to obtain elected representation at the EU level.

Lax hopes that there will be a place created for Swedish-speakers in future representation to the European parliament.  Åland’s government is already loudly calling for its own separate MEP constituency and Åland’s parliament could vote down the Lisbon treaty if concessions are not made by Helsinki. Lax suggests that one seat reserved for Swedish-speakers could be an alternative saying that there ought to be representation for the language minority.

It seems sacked foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva (Kokoomus national coalition party) is having some communications problems in getting his formal resignation to the president’s office.

The Foreign Ministry, from which Kanerva is officially on sick leave since Monday, did announce that Kanerva would be sending his formal resignation request letter by fax.  It’s too late for it to be posted by mail. However, according to Hufvudstadsbladet, the fax plan has failed on the grounds of technical problems. Instead, a car will collect Kanerva’s resignation letter from his home in Turku/Åbo tomorrow morning and drive it to the president of the republic’s office.

Perhaps he would have found it easier to send a text? Then again, given recent events, perhaps Tarja Halonen doesn’t want to give him her number.

The official appointment by President Halonen of Alexander Stubb (Kokoomus) as Finland’s new foreign minister will happen during the government-presidential session this morning at 11.00. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt (from Kokoomus’ Swedish equivalent, the Moderates) will fly to meet Stubb already this afternoon in Helsinki/Helsingfors.

The erotic dancer who was on the receiving end of sacked foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva’s (national coaltion Kokoomus party) 200+ text messages has sad that she is distressed to be stamped as the one who is behind Kanerva’s sacking.  In an interview with the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet she described the situation as lacking in justice.

“I am sad,  angry and sorrowful. What has happened is injust and wrong. I had no relationship with Ilkka Kanerva. He wrote humorous text messages to me. It’s got nothing to do with sexual harassment. There are no reasons for forcing Kanerva to go.”

Turkiainen will not take responsibility for the chain of events that began when she gave the text messages to the gossip magazine Hymy.

“I couldn’t influence what happened later even if I tried to forbid the publication of the text messages. Kanerva can take a part of the blame himself. He lied and changed his version the whole time. First he denied that the SMS messages existed, then he said that they were work-related. It would have been better to admit that it was all a question of innocent flirting from the beginning.”

For Johanna Turkiainen the past weeks have been tough. She has received many threats, “The e-mails and text messages I’ve received from normal people have been horrible and threatening. People are very angry and accuse me of ruining Kanerva’s carrier.  It’s unpleasant”

The relationship with her partner of 8-years also hangs in the balance, “I love my man and I hope that he forgive me so that we can continue our relationship. Should that be the case, I can probably get over this situation, but if he leaves me it’s going to be difficult. Then I’ll move to the USA and commit myself to a dance carrier there.”, says Turkiainen to Hbl.

Turkiainen says that she regrets allowing the magazine Hymy get hold of the messages, “I’ve paid the money back to Hymy and I’ve not accepted the offered trips or bribes,” explains Turkiainen.

Scandal-hit foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva (national coalition Kokoomus party) has pulled out of a seminar in Tallinn that he was due to take part in this morning, reports the Aktuellt news bulletin (Radio Vega). The Estonian meeting arrangers were the ones to annouce this. As reported previously, Kanerva has been involved in a scandal in which he sent over 200 text messages to an erotic dancer. The gossip magazine Hymy will publish a selection of these in its next issue.

Notably Kanerva already arrived in the Estonian capital yesterday. One must wonder what has happened during yesterday evening and this morning in Kokoomus circles? Is Kanerva’s resignation or a reshuffle of Kokoomus’ government ministers imminent?

Those that have been following Finnish news will have heard of the recent headlines involving Finland’s foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva (a member of the conservative Kokoomus national coalition party) and his 200 or so text messages to erotic dancer Johanna Tukiainen. Up until now, Kanerva has managed to retain the trust of his party leader finance minister Jyrki Katainen and of Centre-party prime minister Matti Vanhanen (who has said it is an internal matter for Kokoomus). However, it seems he could yet find himself in more stormy water.

The gossip magazine ‘Hymy’ has annouced it will publish some of the text messages that Kanerva sent to Tukiainen in its next edition (which comes out next Wednesday). According to news reports, Tukiainen attempted in a last minute court action to prevent Hymy from publishing the SMS messages. The court has however declined to do so. Hymy claims, according to Hufvudstadsbladet, that the SMS messages should be published so that the truth about their contents can stop the current rumours about what they might contain. Therefore, in Hymy’s opinion, the publication is to the advantage of Kanerva.

Hymy’s editor-in-chief Esko Tulusto said, “As far as I’m aware, the constitution is still in force and the constitution forbids censorship in advance.”. He declined to comment on the contents of the SMS messages other than to say that the magazine would not be taking a position on whether or not Kanerva should resign.

The publication of Kanerva’s SMS messages will again return the spotlight to Finland’s foreign minister for all the wrong reasons. Naturally, politicians must be entitled to have private lives. This is, however, not Kanerva’s first SMS scandal involving women. Kanerva may yet find that his position becomes untenable - if everything he does in his post becomes overshadowed by the gossip surrounding his text messages, he simply may not be able to get on with his job of promoting Finland’s foreign policy. It’s also doubtful Kokoomus would tolerate an even more prolonged period of “bad news” stories surrounding one of their most prominent government ministers. In short, Kanerva is still very much skating on thin ice.

The controversial outspoken Swedish-speaking Centre party district chairman Peter Albäck has declared (via his blog) that the Swedish Peoples’ Party (Sfp) threatened to quit the government coalition if no proposal for a Swedish-speaking district was included in the court district reform plan (announced about a week ago).

Albäck makes the claim amongst many of his regular denunciations of Sfp (indeed, even to the impartial political observer, his blog seems much more concentrated on forwarding a personal vendetta against Sfp than presenting Centre’s views or policies). Senior Sfp members (including Ulla-Maj Wideroos) have denied that his accusation is true and again expressed dismay that Albäck is threatening the good cooperation between Centre and Sfp at government level.

It is indeed hard not to doubt the trustworthyness of Albäck’s statement, especially given the way he decries any one who does not hold his opinions on his blog (for instance regularly calling people who sympathise with Sfp politics as “taliban”.) If Sfp had threatened to quit, surely they wouldn’t want to keep it secret. For many of their electorate, it would be seen as a good thing; cast-iron proof that Sfp is standing-up for Swedish-speaking Finns. One has to wonder if Albäck’s latest attempted smear on Sfp actually does it more favours than harm.

Image source: Peter Albäck, Centre party’s online image bank. Copyright Suomen keskusta.