COMMENTARY: Money matters

By Unto Hämäläinen
     
      There is no getting away from it. Election campaign funding had a significant impact on the outcome of the last general election in Finland.
      The result of the popular vote was that the moderate conservatives of the National Coalition Party picked up ten seats, the Centre Party just about hung on to their position as the largest party in the country, and the Social Democrats lost eight MPs and a seat in government.
     
The end-game of the election was determined in the final three weeks of campaigning.
      The people went to the polls on March 18th, but the critical phase of the election began on February 26th 2007, at 20:30 in the evening.
      Earlier in the day, the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) had unveiled its election advertising slots, which reporter Tytti Sulander presented to the wider public for the first time in the main evening newscast of YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
     
In the warning SAK spot, which urged Finnish blue-collar employees to make their voice heard, a portly corporate tycoon played by the familiar character actor Oiva Lohtander gorged himself on delicacies in a scene reminiscent of Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe (1973).
      Lohtander's voice-over listed a number of draconian proposals that he would introduce if it were up to him - and of course, he cackled delightedly, it IS up to him, because Finns don't bother to vote anyway!
      In a screening room, YLE journalist Ari Hakahuhta watched a private show of the SAK spot together with Risto Suominen, a director at the Federation of Finnish Enterprises, and the newscast showed Suominen's reaction: undisguised fury.
     
Within a matter of hours, by the following morning, something quite unprecedented happened.
      Dozens - perhaps even hundreds - of candidates standing for the parties of the political centre and the right received calls from outraged and infuriated entrepreneurs who practically shovelled campaign financing in their direction.
      At a stroke, the SAK advertisements (there were two, in similar vein) sent a high-voltage current through the pre-election atmosphere.
      Retailers, owners of car repair shops, gardeners, and many others running small businesses put a big wheel in gear.
      A cautious estimate was that the support groups behind candidates of the "parties of business" received an additional windfall of several hundreds of thousands of euros.
     
The combined pot was probably a good deal bigger in money terms than the much-talked-about venture of the association named Kehittyvien Maakuntien Suomi (KMS), backed by businessmen Kyösti Kakkonen and Toivo Sukari, but both sides were acting on behalf of the same ends - resolute opposition to the parties of the left.
     
SAK pulled its campaign within a few days, after panic-stricken Social Democrat candidates passed on the message they were getting back from the field: small entrepreneurs were turning their back on the party in droves.
      But the damage limitation came too late.
      The impact of the extra campaign funding shows up in the election budgets of the candidates who made it into Parliament. MPs from the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party used an average of EUR 50,000 on their campaigns.
      Social Democrat MPs spent only around EUR 30,000 per head.
     
Naturally the spending gap did not emerge only in the finishing straight.
      Back in the previous autumn, the Centre Party candidates in particular had been very successful in their fund-raising activities.
      In the fall of 2006, the Centre Party's Secretary-General Jarmo Korhonen went around the country meeting nearly all the party's prospective candidates and advising them on how to milk election funding from companies.
     
Korhonen was exceptionally well-qualified for the task.
      He is known in party circles as a master of the fund-raising art. In three European Parliament elections (1996, 1999, & 2004), Korhonen served as campaign manager to MEP Kyösti Virrankoski, and learnt to know sources of campaign funding from all over the country.
      In the 2004 European Parliament elections, Virrankoski's campaign budget broke all previous records: around EUR 300,000.
      Korhonen had also had the insiders in the National Coalition Party slack-jawed with admiration when he collected a big pile of cash on behalf of Sauli Niinistö, the alternative to Tarja Halonen in the second round of the Presidential Election of 2006, after the Centre's own Matti Vanhanen had been knocked out of the contest.
     
And the same procedure continued in the Parliamentary elections of 2007.
      Under Korhonen's guidance, the Centre Party gathered the largest election war-chest and carried out a monumental tin-rattling project in the field.
      The main objective - to keep the Centrist nose in front as the largest party in the country in spite of the burden of four years of government responsibility - was realised, and after the election Korhonen's contribution was lauded to the skies.
     
Jarmo Korhonen's name has come up once again this past week, when a closer look has been taken at who and what are behind the mysterious Kehittyvien Maakuntien Suomi, besides people who advocate - as the Finnish name suggests - advancing the economic prospects of developing areas in Finland.
      This time Korhonen was no longer the object of unreserved praise. At Thursday's meeting of the Centre Party's parliamentary wing there were direct questions as to whether the party secretary had been divvying out money to different candidates.
      Korhonen denied that he had been dealing out money, but admitted that the party's central office had provided "technical assistance" in the setting up of KMS.
     
The assistance had been pretty thoroughgoing: Centre Party official Lasse Kontiola, the party's head of development, had given his own home address in Helsinki to the National Board of Patents and Registration as the contact address when the association was set up eighteen months ago.
      The discussion of distributing support to candidates is very awkward for Jarmo Korhonen. As Secretary-General he should be even-handed towards all CP candidates.
      The KMS Managing Director and factotum Tapani Yli-Saunamäki has admittedly declared that it was he who drew up the lists of those who would receive support.
      What is being asked within the Centrist ranks now is whom might have been giving Yli-Saunamäki sound advice on suitable candidates.
      Who would be best equipped to assess to whom the support should be directed?
     
Regardless of the party, the situation is the same. It is precisely the party secretary who has by far the sharpest image of the candidates' campaigns.
      It is quite likely that in addition to Korhonen, the National Coalition Party's Taru Tujunen and the Swedish People's Party's party secretary Ulla Achrén will be obliged to come up with some answers for their own flocks on what they knew - if they knew - about Kehittyvien Maakuntien Suomi.
      The sums of money received by front-rank candidates were of such a size that they are likely to provoke bitterness and envy among candidates who missed out.
      At present, the strongest gut-feeling is probably one of schadenfreude over the matter.
      Party leaders and ministers are seen looking pained as their memories kick fitfully into action.
     
The government has attempted to extract itself from the bind it is in, but on Friday of last week it was the left-wing opposition and the Greens' Minister of Justice Tuija Brax who led the dance.
      Reforms to the Act on the Disclosure of Election Financing are to be fast-tracked and the amended legislation should be in use in time for the municipal elections in October, though it will be a very tight schedule.
     
But the discomfort felt by the parties of the centre and right is not just a matter of barbs coming from without - there is dirty laundry to be washed within the parties themselves.
      Party congresses will be held in early June.
      The Centre Party's Matti Vanhanen, the National Coalition Party's Jyrki Katainen, and Stefan Wallin of the Swedish People's Party will be quietly hoping that the uncomfortable topic of the election financing mess does not appear on the agendas of the party gatherings they chair.
      It seems like a forlorn hope.
      The distribution of election financing is an extremely sensitive subject within the parties.
      If the party leaders are suspected of having skimmed something off the top or of feathering their own nests, they will feel the ire of the rank and file heavy on their necks.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.5.2008 .


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Vanhanen: Campaign finance law changes possible before municipal election (23.5.2008)
  Brax wants monitoring of election campaign funding away from Ministry of Justice (19.5.2008)
  Members of Parliament revising campaign finance reports (16.5.2008)
  Centre Party MP´s comments spark campaign finance row (15.5.2008)
  Prime Minister warns of political crisis stemming from election campaign money affair (21.5.2008)
  Tapani Yli-Saunamäki: “Treasure chest” handed out money and paid campaign bills (20.5.2008)
  Election financiers (20.5.2008)

See also:
  SAK cancels controversial political television advertisements (5.3.2007)
  EDITORIAL: Conservatives´ big win opens way to centre-right government (20.3.2007)