2007-10-11

Tervo on Heinäluoma's future

The right-wing newspaper Uusi Suomi, successor to important Fennoman papers Suometar and Uusi Suometar, died in 1991. Recently Niklas Herlin (of the Kone Herlins) bought the relevant trade marks and now Uusi Suomi is back as an online magazine (fi). At the moment the site features some basic news coverage and many blogs.

One of the bloggers is author and television personality Jari Tervo, who contributed some interesting insider information (fi) of questionable veracity on the Social Democratic Party's leadership issues. According to Tervo, there's an attempt underway to move current chair Eero Heinäluoma to lead the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK). Long-time SAK chair Lauri Ihalainen will be retiring soon and Heinäluoma has a history in the organization.

Heinäluoma's replacement would be little-known MP Jutta Urpilainen (fi, se). Urpilainen has said before (fi) that she has been contacted about challenging Heinäluoma and repeated this (fi) when asked about Tervo's post. Heinäluoma characterized the claims as "baseless, but funny". I'd still guess that the Social Democrats will contest the next election with Heinäluoma in charge and that Tarja Filatov is a more likely successor than Urpilainen.

2 comments:

egan said...

Didn't someone describe Urpilainen as 'visually gifted'? Excellent euphemism, although if that was the criterion I'd suggest the Richardson woman.

Ari said...

Tervo alluded to the same thing by noting that Urpilainen "doesn't scare male viewers when she appears on television."