COMMENTARY: What to do with an election victory?
Jyrki Katainen
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By Marko Junkkari
On Sunday evening, at Sauli Niinistö’s victory celebration at Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall, National Coalition Party activists were in their pomp: with the presidency, the party has a solid foothold on power in Finnish politics.
For many National Coalition Party veterans, the most important aspect of Niinistö’s victory was its symbolic significance.
After all, the National Coalition Party was largely pushed to the sidelines of politics for foreign policy reasons in the time of the Finnish-Soviet Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance.
Glasses were raised in a somewhat sarcastic manner to the Centre Party’s former leader, the late Johannes Virolainen, who once asked acidly after a parliamentary election triumph by the National Coalition Party “What do you plan to do with that election victory?”
After the excitement, the party’s return to everyday life will be a hard one, and not just for Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, who cut his forehead on a flower pot as he returned home from the celebrations.
The government faces a challenge already this week when it puts forward a proposal for municipal reform and a list of military garrisons to be shut down.
In government negotiations, the National Coalition Party and the Social Democratic Party agreed on the need for municipal reform, but there have been quite heavy disagreements on how to implement the project.
The SDP feels that Minister for Public Administration and Local Government Henna Virkkunen (Nat. Coalition Party) has promoted the reform in a secretive manner, and in ways that are just plain wrong.
At the weekend, SDP chairwoman Jutta Urpilainen called for the inclusion of the opposition in the preparations for municipal reform.
The National Coalition Party dismisses this as a short-term tactic, and an attempt to score points.
The feeling in the National Coalition Party and among the Social Democrats is that the presidential election will not directly affect the work of the government.
There are so many tensions prevailing in the spring, that a few additional threads will not change the situation.
The SDP is eager to profile itself: the presidential elections were a disaster for the party, and municipal elections are approaching.
The Social Democratic leadership met at Haikko Manor on Monday to consider tactics for the spring. It seems that there is a need to better communicate the message of fairness to the voters.
The effectiveness of the message will be examined in the budget framework talks in March, in which billions of euros' worth of spending cuts and tax hikes are expected.
Many suspect that the talks will become a repeat of the difficult government formation talks of last spring - to such a degree that some in the National Coalition Party have hinted at the possibility that the government might fall.
This possibility is certainly quite small, and the Social Democrats do not seem to have any expectations that there will be new elections.
The SDP appears to be taking a line similar to that of Virolainen: what would the National Coalition Party do with a victory in an election that comes from the dissolution of the government if the Finns Party is what becomes available as a coalition partner?
Life in the government would certainly not get any easier.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.2.2012
MARKO JUNKKARI / Helsingin Sanomat
marko.junkkari@hs.fi
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| 7.2.2012 - TODAY |
 COMMENTARY: What to do with an election victory? |
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