COMMENTARY: Smiling Halonen lets go with both barrels

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By Martta Nieminen
     
      President Tarja Halonen appeared on Lauantaiseura, the Finnish Broadcasting Company's regular Saturday morning one-on-one political interview, and she took the opportunity of dusting off a few things that had been on her mind.
      The smiling and cheery Halonen must have been seething just below the surface.
      There has been a good deal of conflicting information doing the rounds lately on the subject of Halonen's role.
      It has on the one hand been claimed that she has lost her grip on the leadership of Finland's foreign policy (Ilta-Sanomat, 15.9.), but then again she has allegedly taken the government's influential foreign and security policy committee by the scruff of the neck (Helsingin Sanomat, 15.9.).
     
In the TV studio on Saturday, Halonen's attack on the National Coalition Party - which has raised its foreign policy profile of late - was unequivocal and surprisingly fierce.
      She made no attempt to disguise the disparaging tones when she spoke of Defence Minister Jyri Häkämies and his National Coalition Party Chairman Jyrki Katainen, the Finance Minister. The two gentlemen's foreign policy remarks were put down in the President's book as belonging to the realm of "party politics".
      Halonen clearly pointed out the pecking order: the defence minister's role is subservient to that of the PM and the foreign minister.
     
Halonen commented that cooperation with both Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) and with the Foreign Affairs Minister Ilkka Kanerva (National Coalition Party) was working smoothly.
      At the same time, the President also gave a clean bill of health to her dealings with the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen (Centre).
      Halonen assured her interviewer that she was not about to pull back from the constitutional principle that Finland's foreign and security policy is directed by the President in cooperation with the government of the day.
     
Since Vanhanen has been given a general brow-beating for being a passive player in foreign policy matters (HS, 16.9.), Halonen's only active companion in this cooperation would appear to be the NCP's Kanerva, who also reported - once again in Helsingin Sanomat - that National Coalition Party views were to the fore in the "current lap of the foreign policy relay".
      Which rather makes one ask: who's actually carrying the baton, then?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.9.2007

More on this subject:
 Halonen: Häkämies may have given cause for puzzlement abroad about foreign policy line

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Vanhanen seen to take background role in foreign affairs (17.9.2007)

MARTTA NIEMINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
martta.nieminen@hs.fi