Election funding row sparks serious discussion of dissolution of Parliament

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The furore over election campaign funding has led to serious consideration of the possibility of dissolving the Finnish Parliament and calling new elections.
      The possibility of holding early elections has split the ranks of both government and opposition parties.
      Leaders of the Parliamentary groups of the opposition parties are meeting on Thursday to discuss the current situation. The meeting was proposed by Tarja Filatov, chairwoman of the Parliamentary group of the largest opposition party, the Social Democrats. The topic of the meeting is “restoration of the credibility of politics and possible new elections”.
      “I think that the government is not capable of functioning”, said SDP Chairwoman Jutta Urpilainen.
     
Left Alliance Chairman Paavo Arhinmäki told the Finnish News Agency STT that the government should be changed for many reasons - not only the election funding issue.
      Filatov did not want to take a stand on possible early Parliamentary elections. “The election financing law is important. It needs to be passed quickly, and it needs to be powerful enough”, she said. In addition to looking for ways to achieve that, the opposition parties are looking for “other measures” for the restoration of credibility.
     
Filatov said that the credibility of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) has been “shaken”. She noted that it is not necessary for a candidate to be able to account for every postage stamp used by the campaign, but if the Prime Minister is not aware even of the large sums that are spent, the question arises if state finances are also dealt with on the principle of “I don’t know, I don’t remember”.
      On Wednesday, both Vanhanen and Minister of Finance Jyrki Katainen (Nat. Coalition Party) rejected the idea of dissolving Parliament.
      Katainen said that there is no need for new elections. Under the law, the Prime Minister would need to propose such a measure, and Vanhanen said that early elections “are not being planned”.
     
The idea of early elections was proposed by former Centre Party MP Jukka Vihriälä, who resigned from his post as chairman of the board of the Finnish Slot Machine Association. (RAY).
      Opinions among Members of Parliament on the matter were varied.
      MP Jyrki Kasvi of the Green League, a government party, favours holding new elections. Opposition SDP veteran Jacob Söderman felt that there would be no point in holding early elections unless the election finance law is reformed before that.
      The general view is that it would be most important to pass a new law on election funding. Seppo Tiitinen, the Secretary-General of Parliament, said that it is Parliament’s task to come up with rules for election financing, because otherwise “the same mess” would exist after new elections.
     
Many government party MPs say that the political crisis is not yet the kind that was meant when the current procedure for dissolving the Parliament was written into law.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  RAY Chairman Vihriälä resigns in midst of election funding furore (23.9.2009)
  Vanhanen sees no problem with foundations making campaign donations (22.9.2009)
  Vanhanen got campaign contributions for nonprofit housing foundation (21.9.2009)
  Centre Party to pay back all Nova donations (18.9.2009)
  National Coalition Party and candidates to return donations from Nova Group (17.9.2009)

See also:
  Centre Party offer of reimbursement of election donations not enough for Nova creditors (24.9.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat