COMMENTARY: Solid and transparent elections for the prime minister's job

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By Perttu Kauppinen
     
      It is a well-documented fact that the biggest problem with democratic elections is that one does not know beforehand who is going to win them.
      The election to determine the next Prime Minister of Finland in around six months from now is doubly problematic, in that we do not know who is going to be in the running, or - more significantly - who is not planning to line up at the gate.
     
The direct election to find a PM is a solemn responsibility for the Centre Party's party conference, particularly since Finland - as a loyal member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) - is bound by a number of awkward clauses pertaining to how free and open elections should be arranged.
      The Centrists are hardly likely to be suspected of the sort of shenanigans familiar from some eastern democracies in the fiddling of the voting count, but the spirit of the OSCE has already been violated in the discussion of the setting of candidates.
     
The existence of any form of discrimination - whether it be against persons over or under the age of 55 years, men or women, people belonging to minorities, or even those whose surname happens to begin with the letter-combination Väyr - should be completely off-limits.
      Bigger challenges await at the party conference itself, for those voting delegates may not be pressured into giving their support one way or another, even though aggressive lobbying and nights of the long knives are among the typical features of local democracy.
      The OSCE also looks askance at all forms of media manipulation, but the abandoning of this salient feature of Centre Party life seems to be too much to expect.
     
The outgoing Prime Minister and Centre Party leader Matti Vanhanen should without delay request that the current OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office (Kazakhstan) makes available official election monitors to oversee the smooth running of the June party conference.
      The timetable for the international body will admittedly be rather tight, and it is unlikely that a full complement of several dozen monitors can be spared for an election involving a couple of thousand voters.
     
Fortunately we have a decent crop of election monitors with international experience right here at home.
      One suitable candidate could be the National Coalition Party's Ilkka Kanerva, who towards the end of his short stint as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2007-2008 criticised Finnish politicians' wishy-washy relationship with election monitoring.
      He urged that the process be "solid and transparent".
      The team's obvious chairman would naturally be the veteran OSCE monitor Kimmo Kiljunen from the Social Democrats, who has traditionally been dissatisfied with practically every election he has observed.
      All the way from his own failed attempts to secure the chairmanship of the SDP.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.1.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Vanhanen: careful consideration behind decision to give up Centre Party leadership (31.12.2009)
  Battle for the Centre Party chair is warming up (8.1.2010)
  Other Centre Party MPs do not warm to Väyrynen´s views on party chairman´s age (7.1.2010)

See also:
  COMMENTARY: Christmas break gives Centre Party figures time to consider Party leadership issue (15.12.2009)

Links:
  Centre Party of Finland
  OSCE election monitoring

PERTTU KAUPPINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
perttu.kauppinen@hs.fi