Finland is headed for a very likely new conservative government after Sunday’s election that punished Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s social democracy, while also heading towards NATO membership, due today, as announced by the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, and the Finnish President, Sauli Niinistö.
The coincidence of the times lacks political significance, since in Finland all parties and the bulk of society support NATO membership, a conviction born of the Russian invasion of Ukraine just over one year. It is the economy that has eroded Marin and his people to the point of losing the legislative elections, despite the fact that the social democrat SDP has even won votes.
The results of the appointment with the ballot boxes launch a clear turn to the right in Finnish society. The conservative National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) obtained 20.8% of the vote, followed by the far-right Party of Finns (formerly called Veritables Finnesos) with 20%, and in third place the Social Democrat SDP of Marin, with a 19.9%. Kokoomus leader and likely future prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said that “there is a crucial issue which is the economy; we have to fix our economy, we have to make reforms to push it towards sustainable growth”.
Petteri Orpo, 53, a political scientist by training, has led the Kokoomus party since 2016, after challenging and defeating his predecessor, Alexander Stubb, who was also prime minister. Orpo, deputy since 2007, has been minister in several coalition governments: Agriculture and Forestry (2014-2015), Interior (2015-2016) and Finance (2016-2019). He campaigned and promised to curb spending and eliminate the high public debt, which is now around 73% of GDP. He is considered a moderate person and a good negotiator.
Orpo announced that he will open talks with all parties, regardless of their ideology, in order to forge “a government with a solid majority”. The Finnish Party, led for just two years by Riika Purra, did not exclude this option already in the campaign. According to the count, the two parties have a combined 40.8% of the vote, which translates into 48 and 46 seats, respectively, in Finland’s 200-seat unicameral Parliament. The SDP has won 43 deputies.
The foreign press asked him yesterday if he is ready to form a government with the far-right, and the conservative leader replied: “There are no far-right parties in Finland”, reports Efe from Helsinki.
Interestingly, in 2017 the same Petteri Orpo, during his time as Minister of Finance, agreed with the then Prime Minister, the centrist Juha Sipilä, to expel Veritables Finnesos (at that time that was its name) from the governing coalition for the ultra-right emphasis given to the party by its new president, Jussi Hallaho. This departure from the government led to a schism in Veritables Finnesos, and the current Finns Party drank precisely from the most radical wing.
Sanna Marin already said during the campaign and on Sunday night that the SDP is ready to try to agree a coalition with the winner Kokoomus, as long as no cuts are applied to education, health or social services, and as long as the party does not participate from Purra. The Finnish press says it seems more feasible for Kookomus to make a pact with the Finns’ Party, although other small parties would be needed to complete the majority. Marin’s government was made up of five parties, and three of these (Aliança d’Esquerres, Verds and Partit del Center) have escalated.
The Finnish scenario recalls what happened during the elections in Sweden in September 2022, albeit with nuances. In this case, the social democratic party of the then Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson was the winner, but the right-wing opposition as a whole overcame the centre-left bloc. This is how the leader of the Moderate Party, Ulf Kristersson, became prime minister at the head of a minority conservative coalition, with external support from the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), which was the most voted party in the bloc.
