Yes, we have a tie. MP Merikukka Forsius, previously of the Green League, switched over to the National Coalition Party. Now the Centre Party and the Coalition will have an equal number of MPs, 51. One more flip to the Coalition and things might get interesting.
Forsius, who is from Vihti, said that local Greens don't want to cooperate with her, and that the Coalition's current values fit her. I'm not sure the leap is good for her political future, though.
Re constitutional reform, Aamulehti interviewed (fi) parliamentary Constitutional Law Committee members Kimmo Kiljunen (Social Democratic Party) and Kimmo Sasi (National Coalition Party). Lest my previous post on the topic leave the wrong impression about said gentlemen's opinions, I'll summarize what they had to say.
According to Kiljunen, the Social Democratic representatives involved with constitutional affairs believe that if the President's powers are taken away, electing the President should be left to the Parliament. Kiljunen said that he considers this to be the best alternative.
The article notes that the Social Democrats have traditionally demanded that the President be elected by the Parliament. After the last five presidential elections, however, it shouldn't take a genius to see that the election system is good for the Social Democrats due to the centre-right parties supporting their own candidates and the Left Alliance usually backing the Social Democrat in the race. Why would Kiljunen want to make an unpopular change that is likely to hurt his party's power? I wonder how widespread his kind of thinking is among the Social Democrats.
According to Sasi, the President should be elected through a popular vote, because "There's not yet enough confidence that some electoral college would select the sort of person the people want. And there's no reason to take the election away from the people, even if the powers are reduced." Sasi, too, favors stripping the President of her powers.
The logical options, I think, are a ceremonial head of state elected by the Parliament and a President with real powers elected by the voters. Sasi's argument about the potential for cabinet wheeling and dealing is silly; there'd be no point whatsoever in electing a controversial, unpopular figure to a ceremonial post. If the choice is left to the Parliament, I fully expect our future Presidents to be inoffensive establishment figures. It'll all become frightfully dull.
As far as other parties are concerned, the article says that the Centre Party is undecided, with the party base traditionally supporting a strong President. True Finns chair Timo Soini, who rarely misses these kind of opportunities, announced (fi) that he, at least, likes the current situation.
Recently there have been some low-level chatter about one of the eternal topics of Finnish politics, the role of the President. Last week Seppo Tiitinen, the Secretary General of the Parliament, argued for full-on parliamentarism. He has something like the German model in mind. According to him, countries that are comparable to Finland usually no longer trust in a great leader. (Since when do people see Tarja Halonen and Martti Ahtisaari as great leaders?)
Social Democratic party leader Eero Heinäluoma endorsed Tiitinen's point that now would be a good time to talk about the issue, because the discussion will become more difficult the nearer we get to the next presidential election. Now is a rare opportunity to change the constitution without an interjecting presidential election, and with the current head of state at the end of her term limit. In theory, then, people can take a stand without considering the identity of the current or next President.
In any case, on the changes suggested by Tiitinen, Heinäluoma declared his position to be open. Of course, back in 2005 (fi) Heinäluoma said that citizens can decide in the next (i.e. the latest) parliamentary elections what sort of powers they wish the President to have. His party supports - or at least supported - maintaining the current arrangement. This neatly shows another way in which elections pose difficulties for would-be reformists; they entice politicians to take a stand for the rather popular status quo.
In other news (fi), although official parliamentary work on the topic will start only in autumn 2008, parties are already considering their positions. Kimmo Kiljunen, a Social Democratic MP, said that one of the issues under consideration will be whether to have presidential elections at all; if the President is elected in a popular vote, she must also have real power. Kimmo Sasi MP, representing the National Coalition Party, would hold elections even for a figurehead President - to soften the blow, I guess.
Something that puzzles me about Finnish political debate is the way the National Coalition Party (in particular) espouses supply-side economics without getting called on it by the left.
Coalition chair and Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen sure sounds like he subscribes to the Laffer curve. He's not crude enough to directly say, "Hey, let's raise taxes so tax revenues will go up!" Instead he and likeminded folk say something like, "In order to get Finland working, we need to increase the employment rate by cutting income taxes. Only be reducing unemployment can we maintain our current economic growth, which in turn is the only way we'll be able to pay for the welfare state." But it's the same thing; they just spell out the supposed mechanism.
Another example of the Coalition tying its advocacy for right-wing economic policies now to being able to pursue left-wing economic goals in the future is when Coalitionists contrast cutting debt with increasing welfare spending. In that case, however, the Social Democratic Party challenges the argument quite forcefully. When it comes to tax cuts, however, the Social Democrats seem awfully quiet. Matti Vanhanen's first government, in which Social Democratic chair Eero Heinäluoma served as the Finance Minister, also cut taxes with the intention of stimulating economic growth.
US liberals, who are in many ways to the right of Finnish Social Democrats, don't go along with the Laffer curve, so why isn't it more controversial in Finland? Given that the Laffer curve is a curve, it might be easier to argue for the economically beneficial effects of tax cuts in a country where taxes are higher, but you'd still expect left-wingers to challenge the notion, wouldn't you?
Yesterday Egan asked whether the nurses' pay row is going to seriously damage the National Coalition Party in the long term.
Looking at recent polls, it seems likely to me that the issue currently hurts the party's popularity. The decrease in support is only a couple of percentage points at the moment, but when the big three parties are so closely balanced, it can still make the difference between holding the office of prime minister and being in the opposition. That's serious.
At some point the issue will stop being a pressing concern. Will the damage last? I think the key here is Finance Minister and Coalition chair Jyrki Katainen. The party itself has a core of ideologically committed supporters and a rather stable image built in countless political rows over the decades. In the long, long term, it'll abide. Whether Katainen remains an effective, credible spokesman for the party is another matter.
I trust I won't be accused of exaggeration when I say that Katainen has come under a great deal of criticism over this issue. He was at the center of the Coalition's pay equality campaign and now holds the state's purse strings, so he's a natural target for nurses' ire. Yesterday's demonstration at the parliament building featured a rendition of "Jyrki Boy" (fi).
With regard to Katainen's credibility, the key quote is (my translation), "The more female-dominated, educated fields are paid over the general raise level, the more we're prepared to raise the state assistance paid to municipalities." The quote is from last February, but its infamy is a post-election phenomenon. Googling for the original Finnish sentence gets about 500 hits at the time of writing.
In summary, my confident prediction on whether the Coalition has suffered serious long-term damage is: maybe, depending on how the party chair comes out of it.
Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva, that master of metaphor, said (fi) he expects the government's next foreign policy report will be "like an appropriate travel brochure". According to the bard of Lokalahti,
They describe the travel destination and tell what sort of people usually go there. Additionally they give the price and information on the travel route. And when it's a question of a group trip, the brochures should be available to all. Few of us make decisions on our trips without having sufficient basic facts and evaluating them, so this must also apply to our NATO relationship.
[...] Finland's NATO membership discussion seems to have passed the Combed Ware period; the Iron Age looms, but there's still some way to go to the information society.
...for the Finnish 2012 presidential election, that is. The Centre Party's web magazine, Apila (fi), has been publishing polls on who the most popular presidential candidates are in the major parties.
For the National Coalition Party (fi), the list goes Speaker of Parliament Sauli Niinistö at 55 percent, Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva at four percent, and a slew of people who have no shot in hell at three percent. There's no surprise here; it's generally understood that the Coalition candidacy is Niinistö's if he wants it.
For the Social Democratic Party, the rankings are Erkki Tuomioja MP at 20 percent, former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen at 17 percent, former Left Alliance chair Suvi-Anne Siimes at 11 percent, and Governor of Bank of Finland Erkki Liikanen at eight percent. It should be noted that the respondents were not limited to party supporters. I'd imagine that Tuomioja has a larger lead among Social Democrats than the general public.
It would be interesting to see how a Tuomioja presidential run would pan out. He agrees with President Tarja Halonen about pretty much everything and Halonen enjoys broad popularity. Nevertheless, I suspect Tuomioja isn't nearly as acceptable to center-right voters as Halonen. Lipponen has said he won't run, which leaves the floor open for someone from the Third Way wing of the party to challenge Tuomioja.
Party chairs Eero Heinäluoma and Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen are at four and three percent, respectively. At least Katainen can say he's essentially tied for second.
Now all we need is a third poll to account for the Centre itself. I mean, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen will be in the lead, of course, but who's second?
Today when I went to check out the latest from STT, the Finnish News Agency, the first headline read:
Finnish PM fined for causing fatal car crash
It went pretty much as expected:
The government front did not waver, bar a single MP. Paula Sihto (centre), the first deputy chairman of the council of the Union of Health and Social Care Professionals, abstained.
The Parliament is debating the budget and YLE televised several hours worth of it yesterday. It wasn't pretty. The Finnish News Agency reports a small detail:
A fire alarm rang out in the middle of the preliminary budget debate. Paavo Arhinmäki (left) quipped that the alarm had been triggered because "so many election promises are being burned".
There's a slight difference of opinion in the weekend's papers on the topic of who is (not) leading Finnish foreign policy. Ilta-Sanomat arrived at the conclusion - based on the word of anonymous politicians - that President Tarja Halonen (Social Democratic Party) is out of the loop. Meanwhile IS's more respectable older brother Helsingin Sanomat published a piece (fi) - based on the analysis of anonymous experts - that Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre Party) is quiet and submissive toward Halonen.
That leaves the National Coalition Party, which provides Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva and Defense Minister Jyri Häkämies. The problem with that theory is that when there's disagreement, for some reason decisions keep going against the Coalition's wishes. Most notable of course is that Finland's not joining NATO any time soon, in contrast with the "personal opinions" of leading Coalitionists. Even setting a timetable for joining NATO Response Forces seems like a difficult endeavor. A minister repeating the word "Russia" three times doesn't magically give him the keys to the republic.
I think this is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Back in the day when the Coalition was in the opposition, criticism of how there's no foreign policy debate was commonplace. Now that the party's in the government and its politicians say some of the same things they said during their opposition days, we suddenly have a foreign policy debate. That of course proves the people in charge aren't really in charge, because if they were, what accounts for all this debating going on?
YLE's A-Talk (fi) is the leading Finnish political talk show - and just about the only political talk show around. The proceedings tend to be rather dry at most times, but yesterday's episode (fi) was more colorful than usual. The topic was Finnish foreign policy in general and Defense Minister Jyri Häkämies's (National Coalition Party) Washington speech in specific. The guests were Pertti Salolainen and Tuulikki Ukkola from the Coalition, Antti Kaikkonen from the Centre Party, and Kimmo Kiljunen from the Social Democratic Party.
That's an interesting party breakdown, what with three guests from government parties and only one from the opposition. I suspect the assumption was that Kaikkonen would take a critical view of Häkämies's speech. My impression was influenced by the seating arrangement which had Salolainen and Ukkola sitting one one side and Kiljunen and Kaikkonen on the other. As it happened, Kaikkonen mostly allowed the other three to bicker among themselves.
Kiljunen, whose rhetoric tends to rub me the wrong way even when I agree with him on an issue, clearly wanted Häkämies to resign, but couldn't bring himself to say it aloud. Instead he said that Häkämies should shoulder his "political responsibility", and kept repeating that phrase to comical effect when the Coalitionists pressed him on what he meant by it. He mentioned the possibility of an interpellation on foreign policy; the Coalitionists response amounted to "bring it on". When talking about EU forces, Kiljunen pointed out that they'd be like NATO forces, but without American troops. For some reason he considered this an argument for, not against EU forces.
I often have a tough time telling whether Ukkola knows much of anything about the topic she's discussing, although I'm never in doubt that she has strong opinions on it. This time she kept her comments brief as Salolainen did most of the talking. When Kiljunen kept asking what the government foreign policy line is in light of many Coalitionists' pro-NATO views, Salolainen argued that such views don't prevent Coalitionist MPs like himself from backing the commonly agreed upon government line. Neither Salolainen nor Ukkola expect the current government to apply for membership.
Salolainen made a pretty bizarre comment about how he'd like all EU members to belong to NATO so that European countries' weight inside the organization would increase, which he thinks would be needed because Americans have messed things up. Kiljunen made the obvious comment, wondering what the Americans would think about that assessment. Salolainen's response that they might like it probably didn't convince even himself.
The biggest disagreement between Kaikkonen and the Coalitionists came when the topic turned to the NATO Response Forces. Salolainen wanted Finland to make a decision next based on NATO's schedule. Kaikkonen said nothing definite, but gave the impression that he wouldn't be upset if the process took longer.
Right after the brouhaha started, Defense Minister Jyri Häkämies (National Coalition Party) briefly defended his comment that Finland's top security challenges were "Russia, Russia, and Russia".
[Häkämies said] upon his return from a visit to the US on Sunday that he continued to be convinced that the speech he gave at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Thursday contained nothing outside the bounds of Finland's official foreign policy line.
He added that taken as a whole his speech had been balanced and moderate.
[Häkämies] told the breakfast programme of commercial broadcaster MTV3 on Tuesday that he would reconsider the rhetoric of the security policy speech he had given in Washington last week if given the opportunity to deliver it again.
One in five feel that the threat from Russia has increased in the past few years. However, about 70 per cent of Finns feel that the threat has not changed.
Defense Minister Jyri Häkämies (National Coalition Party) caused some controversy with his speech (video) at the Centre for Strategic International Studies in Washington.
Mr Häkämies had said in the speech that while Finland was privileged to be located in one of the safest regions in the world, the country's three main security challenges were "Russia, Russia and Russia".
"It is clear that Russia is, supported by the huge revenues it is reaping from oil and gas, on its way of becoming a world player again. According to the Russian worldview, military force is a key element in how it conducts its international relations," Mr Häkämies had added.
Further enhancing Alex Stubb's (National Coalition Party) status as the media darling of the Finnish MEPs, he has been guest blogging over at the Economist's site. After a couple of amusing day-in-the-life-of-a-MEP type of entries - here and here - on Wednesday he let his europhile flag fly. Predictably a heated discussion ensued in the comments section. Yesterday he wrote about his opposition to the current rules on taking liquids on planes. The dude is going places and he wants to take his liquids with him.
As a part of the Financial Times's Finland report, they published a complimentary interview with Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen and a slightly less positive interview with President Tarja Halonen. (My profile of Katainen is here.)
The notable difference in Coalitionist Katainen's and Social Democrat Halonen's messages is that where he wants to reform the Finnish welfare model, she wants to export it to the rest of the EU. Those aims aren't necessarily in conflict with each other, but I do think they say something about the difference in attitudes between the pair.
In other news, Halonen's roof leaks. I'm surprised the fact wasn't used as a metaphor for something or other.
More meta-criticism:
Jyrki Katainen, the chairman of the Finnish National Coalition party, said Tuesday in his first major foreign and security policy speech since becoming finance minister in the spring that it was time for the Finnish security police debate to be "secularised" and moved away from the "oversensitive tradition".
Not naming any names, Mr Katainen said the protagonists in the debate preferred to discuss about "who says what and and with what authority" and schisms between people rather than the issues themselves.
MTV3 published a column on energy taxation (fi) from Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen (National Coalition Party). Katainen defends the government's plans to increase taxes on fuel and electricity as environmentally conscious and timely given the country's economic situation.
The opposition has criticized Katainen's plans to raise taxes more on diesel than gasoline. His argument is that the price of diesel "primarily" affects how many kilometres diesel vehicles log in, not whether a consumer purchases a diesel or a gasoline car, which is affected by other taxes.
I have to admit that the logic here escapes me. Why wouldn't the price of diesel in relation to the price of gas affect what sort of a car one wants to purchase? If driving one type of car becomes more expensive in comparison to driving another type of car, surely that makes the first type of car a less appealing purchase unless there's some reason to assume that the price difference is temporary.
Katainen stresses that fuel tax hikes are a means to keep fuel consumption in check, but that doesn't address the disparity between tax raises for diesel and gas. Presumably one could raise both approximately the same amount and still keep fuel reasonably expensive.
In any case, Katainen plans to favor diesel cars in other ways:
Mr Katainen repeated that his preferred way to support more environmentally friendly diesel motoring was a reform of the annual vehicle tax system.
The minister sees a vehicle tax system based on a car's carbon dioxide emissions in force in early 2010.
In recent days the leading lights of the government have been conducting something of a counterattack on the Social Democrats' insistent criticism of their social policies. First Jyrki Katainen had a go:
Jyrki Katainen, chairman of Finland's National Coalition party and the country's finance minister, on Tuesday pulled no punches in blasting what he said was the Social Democrats' "no-alternative, contradictory and yapping" opposition line. [...]
The SDP had said, among other things, that increases in certain taxes and charges would nullify improvements in the pensioners' role.
Mr Katainen rejected the critique, saying the increases in the prices of electricity, fuels and services would be covered by index-based rises in pensions.
Matti Vanhanen (centre), the prime minister of Finland, said Wednesday that the current Centre-Conservative government had produced clearly more social and equitable policies than had its Centre-Social Democrat forerunner.
[...] Vanhanen underlined that the draft budget contained increases in pensions and the student grant.
The prime minister spoke of a war veteran living alone in Kajaani whose pension and related additions would rise by 76 euros a month next year.
"That is something completely different from the mockery heard last legislative period over five euros," Mr Vanhanen added.
