Chin up, and onward to the elections

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen got a bucket of muck slung at his head, but decided all the same to run as the Centre Party's Presidential candidate

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By Unto Hämäläinen
     
      On Saturday, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen did it by the numbers. He promised to be at the Centre Party's disposal for next year's presidential elections, and the announcement of his willingness to stand was made in front of a gathering of his own local party association.
      That's the way these things should be done in politics; the most fervent supporters being the first to hear the long-anticipated and devoutly-wished words from their leader's lips.
     
The Centre's famed party machine has been revving its engine for several months and impatiently awaiting the moment when the gears can be engaged and it can get out onto the election highway.
      Now it can at least get the wheels turning slowly, even if officially the campaign is only going to begin in the autumn, when Vanhanen will be formally embraced as the Centre Party's candidate.
     
Vanhanen's stock looks to be in reasonably good shape, but seldom - if ever - has a politician embarked on a presidential race under such scandal-splashed circumstances. The history of Finnish presidential elections is colourful enough in its way, but we've never seen anything quite like this before.
      The intimate personal details of the country's most powerful man have been followed for the past ten days, almost as a live rolling newscast.
     
This curious state of affairs began from April 6th, with the announcement by Ms. Merja Vanhanen that the couple were to divorce.
      The brief statement to the Finnish News Agancy STT came as a complete surprise to any and all outside the Vanhanen family circle, but divorce as such is by no means such an unusual occurrence in 21st century Finland. Around 13,000 divorces are granted each year, and on top of that there are all the common-law marriages that bite the dust.
      The Vanhanens chose to speak of their divorce with the same restrained approach that they adopted to family matters at the beginning of Matti Vanhanen's term as Prime Minister in the summer of 2003.
      The facts have been disclosed, but the couple have always been sparing in their presentations of their home or their family life. Merja Vanhanen in particular has preferred to remain out of the public eye, at least a good deal more so than the spouses of many other well-known Finnish politicians.
     
Nevertheless, in the course of nearly two years, a certain public image has been formed of the Vanhanens.
      A lengthy marriage, two children, a blameless family lifestyle (underpinned by the father's being a tee-totaller), and on top of that a handsome detached house in Nurmijärvi all conspired to create a Finnish success story that many were happy to believe in.
      The glossy picture was complemented by Matti Vanhanen's way of handling the tasks of the Prime Minister's office. To the wider public he was a new and untarnished face, albeit that he was and is an extremely experienced politician. Vanhanen has been in Parliament for 14 years, has long held rank in the party exceutive, and has been in politics for more than three decades.
      He is known as a thoughtful and balanced man, who has carried out his duties conscientiously. Not even the finest of image consultants could make a splashy, firebrand politician out of Matti Vanhanen, but if the opinion polls are to be believed, the Finns have not really been looking for a colourful personage. The government's popularity ratings and those of the Prime Minister himself have until very recently been exceptionally high.
     
Strong showings in this respect tempted the Centre Party to dream of an even greater future for Vanhanen.
      Since last autumn it has been clear that the party would very much like to have Matti Vanhanen as its standard-bearer in the 2006 Presidential Elections.
     
Within the party, the sentiment was that it would be possible to build a good election campaign around Vanhanen, with the same sort of spirit found in Esko Aho's bid for the Presidency in 2000. A male candidate on offer, with a family backing him up.
      And yet Vanhanen would be a more credible candidate than Aho, since he is a popular Prime Minister and he has one property that his predecessor did not: the bulk of the moderate conservative National Coalition Party voters have no trouble accepting Vanhanen as their second-choice candidate.
      This is a bankable feature in the one-on-one second round of voting, when the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party are expected to pool their resources.
     
At least this is what Centre Party chairman Vanhanen and his National Coalition counterpart Jyrki Katainen promised publicly a month or two ago. It was a unique coming together, since in past years the leaders of the Centre and the National Coalition have not agreed on public cooperation.
      In the last presidential vote the then National Coalition Party chairman Sauli Niinistö said that he had voted for Aho in the second round - but he only revealed this fact after the election was done and dusted.
     
Hence at the beginning of April Vanhanen's prospects looked to be in great shape, and it appeared that he really would be able to give the incumbent President Tarja Halonen a credible run for her money if she chooses to stand for re-election.
      Vanhanen's divorce brought several houses of cards crashing down.
      A married couple with children were not now being offered to fill the Presidential residence of Mäntyniemi. And yet a successful Presidential campaign has hitherto more often than not been a "family business" - we still clearly recall Mauno and Tellervo Koivisto or Martti and Eeva Ahtisaari on the campaign trail in the '80s and '90s.
      The break-up of the Vanhanen marriage also struck home hard because of the way in which such a splendid picture of his family had been built up in the public mind.
      The conflict between a serene outward image and the surprise news of divorce proceedings immediately prompted doubts and further questions.
     
At the very first press conference he gave after Merja Vanhanen made the news public, Matti Vanhanen was asked if "a third party" was involved in the separation. Vanhanen gave the assurance that there was no such connection.
      People had come to accept Vanhanen as being as good as his word, but now that confidence was ruptured. For more than a week, there has been discussion as to whether he was telling the truth.
      The Prime Minister is not obliged to reveal all about his private life, but equally he cannot go around lying in public. The PM is not just a person, but also an institution, and the rumour-mill destablises both.
      Would such an experienced and talented politician take a huge risk and lie publicly to the Finnish voters, even in extremis?
      It is hard to credit such an idea, since Vanhanen - if anyone - knows the first brutal rule of politics: if a Prime Minister loses the public confidence, he moves to the benches of the former Prime Ministers. Just like his predecessor Anneli Jäätteenmäki.
     
Vanhanen declared on Saturday that he would be seeing to his prime ministerial duties just as he has done before.
      With all the fuss surrounding his divorce and after his promise to stand as a candidate, this may nevertheless become increasingly difficult.
      We are now about to test for the first time how the PM's position and candidacy in a direct presidential election go together, if they do.
     
The President of the Republic of Finland has twice been elected by direct ballot (and without a college of electors), in 1994 and in 2000. On both those occasions, sitting Prime Ministers would have been available as candidates, but the Centre Party's Esko Aho (1994) and the Social Democrats' Paavo Lipponen (2000) refused to even discuss the matter.
      Both placed the work of being PM above that of running for the Presidency.
      Their stance is understandable. Both men relish power, and these days the Prime Minister has more of that at his fingertips than does the President.
      Their refusal was made easier by the fact that their respective parties had good candidates to offer in their stead: in 1994 Paavo Väyrynen (Centre) and in 2000 Tarja Halonen from the SDP. Väyrynen didn't make it, but Halonen did.
     
Matti Vanhanen does not now enjoy the luxury of having as good an alternative to his own candidacy.
      All the same, the caution displayed by Aho and Lipponen may well show to have been wise. Might it really be that the PM's chair is not a good platform from which to seek the office of President? Being Prime Minister may look like a springboard to the Palace and Mäntyniemi, but thus far we have had no experience of an election battle in which the two institutions are in opposition.
      The already somewhat fraught atmosphere may become overheated when the two institutions clash.
     
In his speech in Kerava on Saturday, Matti Vanhanen admitted that the last ten days or so had been heavy going for him.
      He reckoned that he had received an advance delivery of mud and muck slung in his direction. "And I seem to have got the bucket along with it", he remarked.
      "From time to time a macabre but extremely serious question has come to mind: is this the way that people in a difficult life-situation are supported in today's Finland?" Vanhanen pondered.
      He did not mention whom he was asking this question of, but you do not need to be a mind-reader to tell that the enquiry was addressed to the media.
      It would in all fairness only be reasonable that people should be given the opportunity to handle their personal matters in private. Unfortunately, prior examples of marriage breakdowns among leading politicians do not support this noble ideal. For example, the divorce of Paavo Lipponen during his first term as Prime Minister received a good number of column-inches in the press, and the writings then had many of the same features we are seeing now.
     
The coverage today is given its own additional shading by the cooperation between Vanhanen and Minister of Culture Tanja Karpela.
      Vanhanen helped Karpela take her first steps in politics, and Karpela has supported Vanhanen even when he has not enjoyed a great deal of backing, for instance at the elections for the chairmanship of the Centre Party in 2002.
      Karpela is a second-term MP and a member of the government, but the media do not treat her quite as a run-of-the-mill politician.
      Her moves are followed with a strange passionate zeal. When she stepped from the world of beauty pageants and modelling into politics, along with her came another kind of publicity game.
      Karpela has played this game with varying degrees of success: "celebrity" status has helped her collect barrow-loads of votes at Parliamentary elections in 1999 and 2003, but the price of success has been that her private life has been continually out on display.
     
In political journalism, it is perhaps possible to speak of "media management". This was the term Social Democrat stalwart Antti Kalliomäki used recently in pointing to SDP party secretary Eero Heinäluoma's skills in this department, when Kalliomäki was kick-starting the race for a new party chairman to succeed Paavo Lipponen.
      Karpela's fate demonstrates, however, that publicity and celebrity in the world of entertainment is a much tougher nut to crack - so tough that even being a minister does not help in the management of it.
     
In spite of the recent setbacks, Matti Vanhanen decided to suit up and enter the fray as a presidential candidate. It is a bold and brave decision.
      Many other politicians would have retreated in the face of what looks like an insurmountable task.
      Perhaps Vanhanen got his fighting spirit in his mother's milk, since he was born in early November 1955, when his great idol Urho Kekkonen was battling to win his first term as President - and Kekkonen himself was not short of storms raging around his head.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.4.2005


Previously in HS International Edition:
  PM Vanhanen to join Presidential race as Centre Party candidate (18.4.2005)
  Piqued PM keen to explain press rumours surrounding his divorce (15.4.2005)

UNTO HÄMÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
unto.hamalainen@hs.fi