Election for Parliament - not the Prime Minister
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By Unto Hämäläinen
Impatient people are asking when the "election battle" for the Parliamentary elections will begin. No sense getting nervous. The EU Presidency is delaying the beginning of the election campaign until next year.
The upcoming Parliamentary elections - at least for now - have the feel of an interim election. They lack the charge which made the previous Parliamentary elections so unique.
The tension of the Parliamentary elections of 2003 came at the initiative of the Social Democratic Party. The SDP changed its rules and set an official candidate for Prime Minister for the first time. The reason given was the change in the Finnish Constitution: the choice of Prime Minister was shifted from the President to Parliament.
The candidate that was set was the party’s chairman at the time, and second-term Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who at the time was clearly the most popular candidate for PM - at least according to opinion polls.
Party Secretary Eero Heinäluoma was the most conspicuous supporter of Lipponen’s prime ministerial candidacy. Heinäluoma, who led the SDP’s campaign, calculated that by emphasising the choice of Prime Minister it might be possible to turn Lipponen’s popularity in opinion polls into votes in the election.
The Centre Party and the National Coalition Party were not very enthusiastic about the idea of a prime ministerial election at first, seeing it as a Social Democratic election ploy.
The Centre Party’s deputy chairman Matti Vanhanen seemed to be reluctant: he had seen the choice of a Social Democrat as Prime Minister to be possible, even if the Centre Party were to be the largest party. The Centre Party’s new chairwoman Anneli Jäätteenmäki was enthusiastic about an election for Prime Minister - and why not? In the polls, she was considerably more popular a candidate for the post than the National Coalition Party’s Ville Itälä.
There were also calculations in the Centre Party that a duel between Lipponen and Jäätteenmäki would benefit the Centre.
Thus emerged the concept of a prime ministerial election, which was especially dominant at the end of the campaign. Skilful politicians were able to convince voters that the Parliamentary elections had become a direct popular election similar to that of the Presidential elections. You were either for Lipponen or against him, or for Jäätteenmäki or against her.
The duel did affect the result of the election. It helped the main government party, the Social Democrats, and the main opposition party, the Centre, win more seats. In a survey conducted after the elections, one in three voters admitted that the desire to influence the choice of Prime Minister was a factor in their choice of parties.
A couple of months after the election, the voters learned a lesson; the Prime Minister was not, in fact, elected by direct popular vote. The main adversaries in the duel formed a coalition government, and later placed a dark horse - Matti Vanhanen - at its helm, and he had not been mentioned at all as part of the election for Prime Minister.
The political memory of voters is criticised as being short, so it is quite possible that there will be another pitch to sell a prime ministerial election to the voters again.
It is not possible to repeat a duel of chairs of the SDP and Centre, because both parties are in the government, and their chairs hold the posts of Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
Still, it is worth following the movements of the Centre in particular. Now could be the Centre Party’s turn to seek to take advantage of the popularity of Matti Vanhanen and make an initiative of a vote for the PM's post. Vanhanen’s popularity numbers are even better than those of Lipponen in his time, and significantly over the support that of the Centre Party.
However, Vanhanen alone would not be able to organise a duel. Only an opponent capable of raising emotions would make a prime ministerial election believable.
Would the others join in the fray?
A competition between Vanhanen and Heinäluoma would not seem credible. They would only be able to compete over which of them can praise their common government more. The edge of the campaign would also be blunted by the fact that supporters of both parties want to hold on to a government of the Centre and Social Democrats after the elections.
Heinäluoma will certainly be named the SDP’s candidate for Prime Minister in the next meeting of the party council. His popularity as the next PM is so weak that the SDP would do best not to latch on to its chairman as tenaciously as it did four years ago: quite a pretty picture, considering Heinäluoma’s role in building a prime ministerial election the last time around.
The greatest enthusiasm for an election for a head of government has come from the National Coalition Party. There was a small popular movement inside the party last spring aimed at naming Sauli Niinistö its candidate for Prime Minister.
Calls for Niinistö’s candidacy were based on his popularity in polls on the matter, and on his recent success in the Presidential elections. I do not know if it might have been feasible to persuade Niinistö to join such a game. It would have been the same kind of political sleight of hand as the duel between the SDP and the Centre in the previous elections.
Chairman Jyrki Katainen rejected the proposals of Niinistö’s supporters. Katainen wants to be his party’s leader, and its prime ministerial candidate in the next elections.
Katainen’s actions have been criticised as ungrateful. This is true, or course, but in politics it is nothing new. Perhaps he has learned the habit from his mentor Sauli Niinistö. If I remember correctly, Niinistö treated former National Coalition Party chairmen Pertti Salolainen and Ilkka Suominen in a very cavalier manner when he was in power.
With his actions, Katainen made sure that the Parliamentary elections will not be the same kind of race for the prime minister's chair as it was the last time around. The popularity of prime ministerial candidates will have an influence on the electoral success of their parties, but it is unlikely that anyone will have the nerve to put forward the race for the office as a direct popular vote.
Things would be quite different if the parties were to form two alliances according to the Swedish model. Eero Heinäluoma could be the common prime ministerial candidate of the SDP, the Left Alliance, and the Greens. Matti Vanhanen would be an appropriate candidate for the Centre, the National Coalition Party, the Swedish People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats. Then the voters could directly influence who takes the post, and what parties will be in the government coalition.
This is not what will happen in Finland. The parties in the government, and the person who leads it, will be decided in negotiations to be held after the elections. The winner will be the leader of one of the three largest parties - the one who gets a majority of votes from Members of Parliament.
It doesn’t sound very dramatic, but that is the spirit of the constitution.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.9.2006
UNTO HÄMÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
unto.hamalainen@hs.fi
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| 19.9.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 Election for Parliament - not the Prime Minister |
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