COMMENTARY: Small country, small explanations
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By Hanna Kaarto
Within the Finnish political scene, every large party has its own well-established backing groups. Cooperation and mutual assistance between the party and its backroom supporters is an unspoken given.
The parties also have their own "turf" in top administrative jobs; to take just one example the Centre Party has an "occupied" sticker on the position of the managing director of the Local Government Pensions Institution (KEVA).
The moderate conservatives of the National Coalition Party get on very cordially with the representatives of business and commerce.
The two neighbours in Helsinki's Hakaniemi district - the Social Democrats and the trade union movement - also scratch one another's back and pursue shared interests.
A popular catchphrase is that Finland is such a diminutive country that "everyone knows everyone else".
To some extent this is true, and it is regularly used as an explanation for the fact that the politicians and the various interest groups seem from time to time to be more than a little cosy one with the other.
There is nothing wrong with close relations. We are all just victims of the conditions that prevail in a small country!
It would appear that the internalising of this oft-reiterated phrase goes some way towards explaining the politicians' current behaviour.
Generally it is the task of a board to give the managing director the order of the boot if he or she does not carry out his duties properly.
The chairman of the KEVA board, National Coalition Party MP Sampsa Kataja, put out a statement last Friday, noting that "according to the verbal and written reports of the KEVA CEO, he has in no shape or form taken part in the collection of funds for political parties or election campaign organisations".
"The Board of the Local Government Pensions Institution accepted the report unanimously", stated Kataja.
And yet now Kataja admits that he was himself one of the candidates for whom KEVA CEO Markku Kauppinen had proposed to provide election funding.
Kataja finds nothing untoward in this, let alone seeing it as a cause for him to demand the dismissal of Kauppinen, his own political godfather.
Much the same way of thinking is present in the idea of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre Party), quoted in Helsingin Sanomat on June 23rd, to the effect that he does not "see any special reason why a party chairman should bring out all of his private meetings [with businessmen]".
The claim is now on ground no less shaky than that of the explanation as to why he did not remember last summer all the election funding discussions that have since come to light.
According to the explanation given, last year he answered questions about support for candidates, and this summer about support for political parties.
The long-serving Finnish President Urho Kekkonen - whose memory the Centre Party happily made use of in its last election campaign for the European Parliament - was wont to say that "things are, if they look that way".
This is an expression that many politicians quote even today, though for some peculiar reason not at this particular juncture.
Lies? Corruption? Covering up? That's the way things are starting to look.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.6.2009
More on this subject:
 Four MPs tenants in buildings owned by pension company mired in election finance furore
KEVA asks for investigation of its own board
NEWS ANALYSIS: What the campaign finance mess is all about
Previously in HS International Edition:
COMMENTARY: The law, morals, and a dodgy memory (16.6.2009)
See also:
Centre Party rolls out Kekkonen as European election icon (5.5.2009)
HANNA KAARTO / Helsingin Sanomat
hanna.kaarto@hs.fi
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