As I've written before, certain sections of the media have been wringing their hands over the dearth of top level meetings between Finland and the United States. Now, however, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen is scheduled to meet with the guy in charge:
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen starts a visit to the United States on Sunday. Vanhanen will have official discussions with the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington D.C.
Social Democratic Party MP, former Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja announced (fi) he will stand as a party chair candidate in a non-binding party membership vote, if such a thing is organized. The vote isn't a sure thing, though, as the current chair, former Finance Minister Eero Heinäluoma has expressed doubts about holding it.
The election method is for regional representatives gathered to the party conference to choose the chair. I think Tuomioja believes that if the vote is left up to party insiders, he doesn't stand much of a chance, so he needs to up the public pressure. If he wins a non-binding membership vote and still loses the party conference representative vote, it would lead to calls to change the election procedure, which might also be an acceptable result for him. Also, if party members are denied the opportunity to have their say, Tuomioja has some new supporting evidence for his case against Heinäluoma.
Tuomioja's themes were undivided human rights and equality. According to him the party's popularity depends on how well those values are carried out. I find a bit odd the emphasis on human rights. Now, obviously human rights are important, but they're not exactly a leading election issue, are they? Support for human rights also doesn't seem to differentiate him all that much from his main opponent. Or does Heinäluoma have some anti-human rights positions of which I'm not aware?
It's enlightening to occasionally observe how differently the same events are covered in Finnish and Russian press. For example, compare Helsingin Sanomat with Moscow Times on Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva's comments upon taking the OSCE chairmanship.
While I'm on the subject, while this YLE article states that Russia accepting election monitoring during the upcoming presidential election "would be a great victory for Finland", I'm far from convinced that Finland had anything to do with it.
The next time an unlucky politician is criticized for not knowing the price of some common grocery, remember this:
More than one in ten respondents could not give any price for a carton of milk or a packet of sausages in euros, while those few who did logged an average error of almost 30 per cent.
In a similar poll taken before euro notes and coins hit the tills in Finland found that nearly all respondents could provide some sort of estimates of the prices of staples, with errors remaining below the 20-per cent mark.
Social Democratic Party MP and former Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja will reveal Saturday whether he'll challenge incumbent Eero Heinäluoma for the party chairmanship. Helsingin Sanomat reports (fi) that sources close to Tuomioja believe he will enter the race. In 2005, when Heinäluoma was elected to the job, Tuomioja gathered a third of the vote.
Since the parliamentary election loss, Tuomioja has been busy searching for a new direction for the party. Inasmuch as he's found one, what better way is there to put it in practice than as the chairman of the party? I don't think he's going to win, mind you, but it would be interesting to see him try and what repercussions it would have to SDP's policies.
Other potential candidates who have not ruled out a run are former Justice Minister Johannes Koskinen and Jutta Urpilainen. The party meeting will be held in June, so now's a good time to announce one's candidacy.
Great ledes of our time, from Helsingin Sanomat (fi): "A majority of Finns thinks that the cause of poverty is that a person is unemployed or has a too low salary." It seems that most Finns have firmly grasped the link between not making much money and poverty. No wonder we rocked PISA.
More seriously, the study (fi) that prompted the article looked into whether people attribute poverty to individual, structural, or fatalistic causes. According to a 2005 survey, most blamed poverty on societal structures, fate, and poor luck. Few think poverty is about laziness or lack of will.
I'm not sure why you'd want to set these causes against each other. Surely the correct explanation includes a bit of each.
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.
Helsingin Sanomat has a piece on party web magazines, in which representatives from all parties promise to develop whatever services they're currently offering.
Currently only the Centre Party has the best web magazine going in Apila (fi). By contrast, the party organ, Suomenmaa (fi), has a pretty shabby-looking web site that only carries a few stories from the current paper and has nothing in the way of archives that you can browse.
The Social Democratic Party's Ruusuverkko (fi) publishes two to four stories a month, which isn't enough. It also lacks a newspaper-like front page, although the stories do appear on the party website's front page. Of course there's Uutispäivä Demari (fi), the party organ, which has a pretty good website.
For the National Coalition Party, Verkkouutiset (fi) does a good job of reproducing politics-related Finnish News Agency stories with only the occasional editorial thrown in. Aside from the editorials, its Coalitionist leanings sometimes show in stories' headlines and prominence. The party organ, Nykypäivä (fi), provides more opinion pieces and has a nice archive.
The Green League's party organ, Vihreä Lanka (fi), doesn't put all too many of its stories online. The party has no online magazine per se; the closest thing is a blog (fi) which isn't updated all that often. The Left Alliance's party organ Kansan Uutiset (fi). Despite a slightly clumsy design, it offers a decent amount of original news stories and opinion pieces.
The common problems these papers have is that a) they don't provide enough original content (Ruusuverkko, Verkkouutiset, Vihreä Lanka), and b) the web design is pretty poor (Suomenmaa, Kansan Uutiset, Ruusuverkko). Instead of having several papers on the Web, maybe the parties should focus on developing their party organs' online presences. The content is already mostly there; what's lacking are websites that look sharp, offer archives that you can browse, and offer at least some interactive features. Group blogs might also be nice - for examples, see TAPPED, The Corner, or Hit & Run.
I propose that henceforth all headlines for stories about Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee should be huckawords - that is, combinations of the prefix "hucka-" and the actual word. Preferably the headlines should end in an exclamation point, but this is not strictly mandatory.
I'll give a few example, so you'll see how this works.
Story: Huckabee wins a primary.
Headline: Huckaboom!
Story: Huckabee loses a primary.
Headline: Huckabust!
Story: Huckabee is criticized by conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg.
Headline: Huckafascist!
Story: Huckabee polls poorly head-to-head against Democratic candidates.
Headline: Huckainelectability!
YLE reports (fi) that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (se) said that defense cooperation between Finland, Norway, and Sweden meets the new types of soft security challenges better than NATO membership. Bildt raised the possibility of also inviting other countries on the Baltic. (Bildt expressed frustration about being unable to find information on the Foreign Ministry's NATO report in languages other than Finnish. Not an aLwNGL reader, obviously.)
Noted NATO membership supporter and parliamentary foreign policy committee chair Pertti Salolainen (National Coalition Party) was asked for comment. He agreed with Bildt on the Nordic approach, but expressed some reservation about including the Baltic countries. Salolainen also admitted a basic fact: "Now it's pretty clear that during this parliamentary term and during this presidency we won't be joining NATO." True, that.
Noted NATO membership opponent and President of the Republic Tarja Halonen (Social Democratic Party) was likewise asked for comment. She, too, agreed (fi). "[Bildt] said that with regards to these new security risks, Nordic cooperation may even be more important than membership in some alliance. With this in mind one can say that he's thinking along Finnish lines. To kid a little, it's nice that Swedes too join in this thinking." The difference to Salolainen was that Halonen was less reserved on the idea of including the Baltic states, mentioning that there have already been talks on cooperation.
The point to grasp here is that Nordic defense cooperation is so inoffensive that both sides of the Finnish foreign policy debate can embrace. A cynic would say this is true because it wouldn't make much of a difference to anything, new threats or no new threats. But it's still nice.
The Helsinki City Museum has a nice online exhibition of pictures taken of Helsinki sights by Signe Brander in the early 1910s. The pages are in Finnish, but navigation is pretty simple. There are two tours ("kierros"), each of which have several objects ("kohde"), each of which feature several pictures ("kuva"). "Panoraama" takes you to a panorama view and "animaatio" to an animation view, where applicable.
To keep things political, here's an animation (of sorts) of a workers' May Day parade.
Brander has captured the bleeding edge of early 20th century political advertising, from prior to the first unicameral parliamentary election in 1907.
Here's a shot of the inaugural service held at St. Nicholas' Church (a.k.a. the Helsinki Cathedral) and here's a parade from the church to the Imperial Palace (a.k.a. the Presidential Palace).
There's also a pretty panorama view from the church dome.
Finally, for those interested in a bit of social realism, Brander also photographed Töölö and the area's ordinary folk.
In the remote chance that you didn't the President's traditional New Year's speech, you can find the text (fi) on-line. A translation is probably in the works. If so, it'll be posted here. In the meantime, here's my summary:
"Things have been nice and peaceful lately. It's a shame about Jokela, though.
"Still, public welfare services rock, because they keep you safe. Social equality rocks, too, but sadly nowadays some people make less money than others.
"You know what else is nice? Comprehensive income agreements. I mean, just think about this autumn's quarrels. I hear some people want to make some reforms here.
"Everyone should do something about climate change, including us. Also, the Baltic Sea is a bit polluted. Come on, Baltic Sea peoples, let's work together here.
"How about that Mikael Agricola, eh? Not that everyone speaks Finnish.
"There are Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Finland, and I've been talking to all three. Talking is good.
"I met an Afghan immigrant girl. She said she likes it here, probably due to the peace.
"Big ups to our soldiers serving abroad.
"We'll be chairing OSCE next year. The whole thing was Kekkonen's idea, need I remind you.
"We had a parliamentary election in 2007. In 2008 we'll hold municipal elections. Municipalities offer welfare services. Please vote, 'cause elections matter.
"Thanks for everything. Peace out."
