A parliamentary group of political novices

Most MPs of the True Finns joined party after 2003

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By Unto Hämäläinen
     
      Two months ago, on October 11th, I sent the following e-mail to Members of Parliament of the True Finns*. “I am writing an extensive article about the True Finns, and in that connection I ask what year you became a member of the party. If you were once a member of the Finnish Rural Party, I request that you kindly mention it.”
      I have made similar surveys before, and from my experience I knew that the questions must be as easy as possible to answer. MPs receive many enquiries, and they do not like to answer them if they are complicated.
     
A total of 38 messages were sent, as I did not have the nerve to approach the party’s busy leader Timo Soini. In any case, I knew that Soini was a founding member of the party who had been a member of the Finnish Rural Party (SMP) for 16 years.
      My intention was to write a story about the answers in Kuukausiliite, the monthly supplement of Helsingin Sanomat. I had interviewed True Finns MEP Sampo Terho for the article, and I wanted background stories for the interview.
     
The interview with Terho appeared in early November, but it is only now that the study on MPs joining the True Finns is coming out. Why is that?
      It took nearly two months before I got an answer from all of the MPs to this simple question.
      At first things looked good. In just a couple of days I got 15 answers. Among the first were, for example, Kike Elomaa and Teuvo Hakkarainen.
     
After the initial surge, the responses suddenly stopped coming in. For some people, answering proved to be quite difficult.
      There were a number of reasons for this. There were computer problems, and for some, their telephone did not work. Some said that they read their e-mail only occasionally.
      Laila Koskela from Tampere finally said by telephone that she had not answered the e-mails because she did not think that anyone would really be interested.
     
Although it took a long time for many to respond, some wanted to air their first experiences of being a Member of Parliament.
      This provided an opportunity to take a peek into the mental landscape of ordinary True Finns MPs. Many spoke of the difficulties of the new job and about how they constantly have to rely on Parliamentary civil servants and more experienced MPs.
      This differs considerably from the self-assured image that has come across in the media.
     
Now, after dozens of reminders and telephone calls, the survey is complete.
      It shows that a significant proportion of True Finns MPs are newcomers to politics. No less than 30 of them joined the party only a few years ago, and most of them do not have any significant experience in municipal politics.
      They deviate clearly from the rest of Parliament. Of the new representatives of other parties, only a few are novices to such a degree. Members of the National Coalition Party, the Social Democrats, or the Centre Party rarely get into Parliament until they have been members for 10 to 15 years, and after a lengthy career in municipal politics.
     
The survey also shows that True Finns MPs have made political history.
      Not since the first parliamentary elections of 1907 have as many newcomers entered Parliament as is the case now.
      The upheaval has been compared with the electoral success of the Finnish Communist Party in 1945. The comparison is apt, but it is good to remember that at the time, those who were chosen were either tried and true Communist activists, or politicians who had defected from other parties. They were called “sniffers of the wind”.
     
There would seem to be many wind-sniffers among the True Finns as well. This can be said, considering that three out of four of the MPs have joined the party only after the 2003 parliamentary elections.
      In those elections, the party only managed to get three MPs elected, and both Timo Soini and Tony Halme got in for the first time.
      Halme won a massive landslide in Helsinki, but Soini managed to get into Parliament thanks to an electoral alliance that the True Finns had made with the Christian Democrats in Uusimaa.
     
Under Soini’s leadership, support for the party started to grow after the parliamentary elections of 2007, culminating in a sudden surge in the autumn of 2008.
      And as that happened, new people joined the party, to with an eye on a parliamentary seat.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.12.2011
     
* NOTE: In August, the party known in Finnish as Perussuomalaiset decided that henceforth they would like to be known in English as "The Finns". Owing to the awkward lexical overlap between "The Finns" as a political party and "the Finns" as a nation, there was considerable negative feedback for the move, particularly among those who felt that it was altogether too sweeping a name for a political grouping that - despite its recent massive strides forward - still only enjoyed the support of less than 20% of the Finnish voters. The official name in English, if such exists, is "The Finns Party", but it is noticeable that many English-language sources continue to use the old nomenclature. Parliament itself has only recently changed to the new terminology. Perussuomalaiset actually translates as "Basic Finns", or "Regular Finns", or "Ordinary Finns".


See also:
  Soini blames recent poll numbers on gaffes by True Finns figures (5.12.2011)
  Prospect of dancing gays keeps MP away from Independence Day reception (17.11.2011)
  COMMENTARY: True Finns have issues with reality (15.11.2011)
  COMMENTARY: Soini has trouble keeping his MPs under control (25.10.2011)

UNTO HÄMÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
unto.hamalainen@hs.fi