COMMENTARY: Little red number trumped by wedding out of the blue

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By Hanna Kaarto
     
      Rather surprisingly, the new political year began in a very different mood from the way the old year ended.
      Fears of impending recession and thoughts of what reflationary rescue packages might contain were forgotten for just a moment or two when the Social Democrat leader Jutta Urpilainen surfaced posing in fishnet tights and a slinky red number in the New Year issue of the tabloid Iltalehti.
     
In the very next edition of the rival tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, Arja Alho, a former minister and an SDP candidate in the forthcoming European Parliament elections, roundly smacked down Urpilainen’s glamour-model move.
      Alho is something of an expert at delivering such brickbats: she was a tireless thorn in the side of the party leadership during Eero Heinäluoma’s time at the helm.
     
But while the Social Democrats bickered in the red corner over the rights and wrongs of glitzy politics, in the blue corner the conservatives of the National Coalition Party upped the ante (once again) in the publicity stakes.
      Parliamentary Speaker Sauli Niinistö, the former head of the NCP and a former Finance Minister (and the defeated Presidential candidate in 2006), announced he was marrying the National Coalition’s head of communications Jenni Haukio.
     
This little bombshell was a surprise even to many well-placed figures in the party.
      The act of getting hitched itself was not part of the publicity game, but the way in which it was so brilliantly kept under wraps in advance - even from close colleagues, and even over a period of nearly two years!
      Posters on online discussion forums heaped praise on Niinistö on Saturday for just this fact: Good that you didn’t let the headline writers drag you by the nose.
     
If the happy couple had instead chosen to have their faces on the fliers and front pages of the rags and mags, the catty remarks about Niinistö “Doing a Lipponen”* or references to “Finland’s Sarkozy” would inevitably have been flying around instead.
      For a good long time now, the National Coalition’s communications machine has shown a great deal more by way of professional smarts than that of any other Finnish party.
     
One crucial aspect of political communication is the efficient withholding from the public of certain matters.
      And in this respect the conservatives have scored several times before this latest incident, with us journalists being on the receiving end.
     
As well as throwing down a challenge to the media, the NCP has given one to its competitors in the rival parties. They need to shape up.
      If Arja Alho had really wanted to surprise people, she might instead have pointed out to Ilta-Sanomat that it seems to be alright for Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin to appear in public buffed up and shirtless, for Matti Vanhanen (Centre) to get his picture in the paper sweating away in a rowing competition, or for the year’s shiny new face on the political block Alexander Stubb (National Coalition) to be photographed completing a marathon or triathlon event, so what could possibly be wrong with a female politician like Urpilainen celebrating the New Year in sporty tights and an off-the-shoulder frock?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.1.2009
     
     
*Note: For those unaware of the reference, the former Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, and SDP leader Paavo Lipponen divorced his first wife in 1997 after more than 30 years of marriage and remarried in 1998, fathering two children with his new wife Päivi Lipponen


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Speaker of Parliament announces surprise marriage (5.1.2009)

HANNA KAARTO / Helsingin Sanomat
hanna.kaarto@hs.fi