Election casualty Paavo Väyrynen to continue his Presidential election campaign

Paavo Väyrynen

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The Centre Party veteran, honorary chairman and minister Paavo Väyrynen, 64, who lost his seat in Parliament, refuses to quit politics because of one defeat.
      The switch from the constituency of Lapland in the 2007 Parliamentary elections to the southern constituency of Uusimaa for the elections just past was a mistake, but Väyrynen has already set his sights on the 2012 Presidential campaign.
     
“I will take part in the vote among the party members. It will be interesting”, Väyrynen says.
      “The Presidential election provides the Centre Party with a chance to restore people’s confidence in it. This chance has to be utilised. The situation was the same in 1987, when the ‘red-blue’ government of the SDP and National Coalition Party pushed the Centre Party aside into opposition. The Presidential election of 1988 brought the Centre Party back into focus as one of the big parties.”
      According to his own words, Väyrynen has not spared much thought for the future. “I have all kinds of hobbies up north in Keminmaa.”
      He intends neverthless to keep his second home in the southern town of Tuusula.
     
Väyrynen's defeat in the election, where he secured only the third-largest number of Centre Party votes in a constituency that ended up electing just two Centre Party MPs, brings to an end an uninterrupted period of fully forty years in which the often controversial politician has been either an MP or a MEP.
      Väyrynen has also held several ministerial appointments, including that of Foreign Minister in four different governments between 1977 and 1993.
      At the time of the last election, he was the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development in Mari Kiviniemi's cabinet.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Paavo Väyrynen says he disagrees with Foreign Minister Stubb on “everything” (15.2.2011)
  Election evening highlights (18.4.2011)
  And we say farewell to... (18.4.2011)

See also:
  COMMENTARY: Another Väyrynen sequel (26.1.2010)

Links:
  Paavo Väyrynen (Wikipedia)

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