COMMENTARY: The Social Democrats' foreign policy roar has turned to background noise
No scope for influencing foreign relations from opposition
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By Kari Huhta
Even an experienced politics-watcher could be forgiven for scratching his or her head when asked who the influential foreign policy figures are in today's Social Democratic Party.
The names just don't come to mind.
Party leader Jutta Urpilainen has an explanation.
"We have an international forum that is open to all members of the SDP and which I lead", says Urpilainen.
In matters of foreign and security policy, Urpilainen says responsibility is spread among the forum, the SDP Parliamentary wing, various working groups, and a bunch of experts.
There are no individual names or telephone numbers for this band of SDP brothers and sisters.
Things have indeed changed.
As recently as in the last years of the 1990s, it was hard to find anyone who was anyone in shaping Finnish foreign policy who was not a member of the Social Democrats.
In poker terms, the party enjoyed a foreign policy straight flush: president, prime minister, foreign minister, and a position of real strength within the foreign ministry civil servant hierarchy.
The rock-solid position was one that had been forged with care by the late Kalevi Sorsa, SDP leader from 1975-1987 and Prime Minister on three occasions between 1972 and 1987. It even survived the knocks taken during the SDP's four years in opposition while Esko Aho (Centre Party) led a centre-right coalition from 1991-95.
Now all that is left of the pillars of the SDP foreign policy temple is the President, Tarja Halonen.
The Centre Party has provided the Prime Minister for two terms, since Anneli Jäätteenmäki took over (briefly) from SDP chairman Paavo Lipponen in 2003, and was herself replaced later that year by Matti Vanhanen.
Halonen held sway over the Ministry for Foreign Affairs from 1995 to 2000, and Erkki Tuomioja remained in the job for one term even after the Centre Party took on the prime ministerial role in 2003.
"The President of the Republic's Social Democrat background is of significance, says Tuomioja, who now chairs Parliament's Grand Committee.
There are other Social Democrats in Parliament with a good grasp of foreign affairs: Liisa Jaakonsaari, Antti Kalliomäki, and Eero Heinäluoma all qualify.
The position of the SDP does not look that parlous when one counts up the choice committee seats they occupy, the role of President Tarja Halonen, and the general consensus spirit that infuses foreign policy decision-making in this country.
And yet the changes that have taken place are of such dimensions that there is no going back to the old hegemony, even if the SDP were to end its current spell in opposition after the next elections.
"It is a typical Social Democrat problem, that we don't communicate among ourselves so awfully much", says Liisa Jaakonsaari.
According to one estimate, the SDP's foreign policy machine has simply given up the ghost.
Whereas at one time the foreign policy speeches and stands on issues were systematically and tightly channelled through the party chairman, these days the more experienced party figures appear under their own names and leave the chairman and her inexperienced assistants to fend for themselves. The sound of a discordant chorus does not travel well, and the old roar has become something of a whisper.
The change in the status of the Social Democrats within the corridors of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs is still ongoing.
It is not just about the adjustment that took place when the National Coalition Party - first in the shape of Ilkka Kanerva, and subsequently through Alexander Stubb - took over the reins at the ministry in March 2007.
A large number of senior civil servants with ties to the SDP have retired or are in the process of going into retirement, with the result being that not even with a new SDP minister in the house would it be possible to restore the party's former clout.
According to one source, the decline and fall of the SDP era was set in motion by a Social Democrat himself.
Erkki Tuomioja reportedly put his own views of the abilities of candidates before any SDP background they might have had.
Tuomioja himself says that he placed the greatest priority on competence and on a readiness to work according to the rules of civil servants.
One SDP source believes that the moderate conservatives of the National Coalition Party are now trying in their turn to build their own straight flush in the Foreign Ministry.
"On my appointments charts, political background has no relevance", says Alexander Stubb by way of a denial of the claim, and he lists similar grounds for appointing staff to those of his predecessor Tuomioja.
Filling the ministry with political appointees is also no longer an easy task through the civil service courses, says Antti Sierla, the Undersecretary responsible for making the current crop of selections.
And what are the consequences of the ending of the Social Democrats' foreign policy era?
Thus far, nothing very much.
The broad lines of the foreign policy speech Jutta Urpilainen made a couple of weeks ago would fit quite comfortably into the programme of the present Centre Party & National Coalition government.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.5.2009
KARI HUHTA / Helsingin Sanomat
kari.huhta@hs.fi
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| 5.5.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 COMMENTARY: The Social Democrats' foreign policy roar has turned to background noise |
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