Election fallout: Left Alliance Korhonen goes, despite doubts it will change matters

Conservatives ponder role of controversial candidates

Paavo Arhinmäki

Ari Vatanen

Anni Sinnemäki

Olli Rehn

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Two days on from a painful defeat in the European Parliament elections, the parties of the left are looking around for someone and something to blame.
      The sharpest criticisms have been directed at the Left Alliance leader Martti Korhonen, with outgoing MEP Esko Seppänen having suggested that Korhonen should go and should be replaced by the party's deputy chair Paavo Arhinmäki.
      In the latest development on Wednesday morning, Korhonen has announced he is leaving the post with immediate effect. The chairman had earlier observed that he would go willingly if only it would improve matters, but he doubts that things are that simple.
     
The Left Alliance saw its share of the vote decline to 5.9%, from 9.1% at the 2004 European Parliament elections and from 8.8% at the last Parliamentary poll two years ago, and the party lost its only seat in the European Parliament.
      Korhonen looks at the bigger picture and notes that one can draw one's own conclusions when even within the Social Democrats - who also lost one-fifth of their support and one seat - the two successful candidates were a supporter of NATO membership [Liisa Jaakonsaari] and an Orthodox priest [Mitro Repo]. Repo ran as an independent on the SDP lists.
     
Korhonen also complained that both Arhinmäki and another recent critic, MP Markus Mustajärvi, had been asked to stand in these elections and had been told that the party was possibly in danger of losing its mandate.
      Both of them refused the invitation, begging the question that they were not in a position to talk when they had done nothing to further the party's cause at the ballot-box.
     
In any event, Korhonen has gone. The Left Alliance announced on Wednesday morning that they would be holding a press conference at 12:00, and the instant predictions were that it would signal his resignation. So it turned out.
      The Left Alliance will seek a new chairman at an exceptional meeting of the party council on June 27th.
      Korhonen became chairman of the Left Alliance in May 2006.
     
Though the Social Democrats were also among the losers on Sunday, party leader Jutta Urpilainen seems for the moment to be under marginally less pressure.
      Nevertheless, this is the third election in a row when the SDP has seen its popular support eroded: in 2003 at the Parliamentary elections, the SDP was riding high with 24.5% of the vote, but by 2007 that had fallen to 21.4%, and now the figure was a disappointing 17.5%.
      The two main parties on the left could not raise a quarter of the total votes between them.
     
The Social Democrats failed to turn their role as leader of the opposition into election success, in spite of an economic climate that should arguably have helped their cause.
      This will naturally concentrate minds within the party as they look ahead to the next general elections in 2011.
      Urpilainen's selection as chairman was intended to provide a change-of-generation in a party where the age-structure of the membership is worryingly on the old side - she will have to deliver on that in the coming months.
     
Over on the other side of the political house, the moderate conservatives of the National Coalition Party were also reflecting on a missed opportunity.
      As parties of the centre-right made ground across Europe, the loss of one of their four MEPs and a 0.5%-point decline in support came as a disappointment, even if the National Coalition are now more clearly the strongest of the "big three" of NCP, Centre, and SDP.
      Some of the blame for the lack of more concrete progress was placed on two candidates whose controversial views may have hurt support.
     
Party veteran Ben Zyskowicz criticised the views of former MEP Ari Vatanen, whose negative comments about the climate change debate during the campaign may have caused some National Coalition supporters to switch to the Greens. Vatanen was not re-elected, and finished 7th on the party's list.
      Zyskowicz also noted the negative effects of the outspoken opinions on immigration put forward by candidate Kai Pöntinen, although some have argued that Pöntinen's presence on the lists helped to stem the losses to the True Finns, who also campaigned on an immigration-critical platform.
      The NCP secretary Taru Tujunen commented that Pöntinen's views were "not that far" from the party's line, but that the intolerance factor was too much. She felt instead that Vatanen's remarks were more problematic, given the broad consensus over global warming and climate change that is found in Finland.
     
The Greens were among the election-night winners, gaining a second MEP, and this prompted an injection of political muscle into their statements.
      The party's newly-elected chair Anni Sinnemäki commented on Tuesday that the present EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn (Centre) could not be the only candidate put forward for a seat in the new Commission.
      Earlier Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) had urged the parties in the four-member coalition government to close ranks behind Rehn and avoid sending mixed signals to Brussels, which might affect the weight of any portfolio to come Finland's way.
      Sinnemäki feels that it should not simply be a done-deal among the big parties, and questions the thinking that the position had been earmarked to the Centre Party in the government formation talks.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Timo Soini drew support evenly from across the country (9.6.2009)
  True Finns and Greens advance in European Parliament elections as big parties suffer (8.6.2009)

See also:
  European elections: Centre accuses National Coalition Party of dirty campaign tactics (4.6.2009)

Links:
  Left Alliance - Vasemmistoliitto (Wikipedia)

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