Former Left Alliance leader to be General Director of Pharma Industry Finland

Siimes "wanted work in the private sector"

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Former Left Alliance Chairwoman, MP Suvi-Anne Siimes plans to leave politics after the Parliamentary elections in March next year. On Wednesday it was announced that Siimes would take up the post of General Director of Pharma Industry Finland (PIF), an organisation that promotes the interests of Finland’s pharmaceutical industry.
      She will replace the present General Director, Jarmo Lehtonen, who will retire at that time.
      The former party leader and minister describes her new task as spokesperson for the drug industry as "an economist’s dream".
      She sees pharmaceutical industry as a field in which companies are in strong competition with each other, and which is also fairly closely regulated by authorities. In her new job, she plans to put an emphasis on openness.
      She also has strong faith in the future of the field. "Finland has every possibility to create industry in the bio-sector, as long as the preconditions - copyright legislation and patent issues - are put in shape.
     
Siimes also emphasised that she would leave completely after the end of the present Parliamentary term in March.
      "I am pleased and satisfied to have been a Member of Parliament and a party leader for two terms", she said, emphasising that she had no grudges.
      Siimes said that she had received a few other job offers after leaving the party’s leadership, and announcing that she is looking for new work.
      She chose PIF because she sees it as an "organisation of experts". In addition, she says that she specifically wanted to work in the private sector.
     
Siimes’ new office in the building that houses the Palace Hotel is known as a bastion of Finnish employers. Siimes says that it made her "cough a little bit at first".
      "Then I decided that I can take it."
      She would not disclose the salary that she would be earning, but it is generally believed to be at about the same level as that of her predecessor, who earned EUR 158,335 from his main job, and various other work.
     
Siimes’ political career took off in 1998 when she was chosen to replace Claes Andersson as chair of the Left Alliance. She also took over from Andersson as the Minister of Culture.
      Siimes was not elected to Parliament until 1999. In the same year she became the Second Minister of Finance in the second government of Paavo Lipponen (SDP). The first Minister of Finance was Sauli Niinistö (Nat. Coalition Party).
     
As party leader, Siimes clashed with Left Alliance members with a political background in the hard-line faction of the Finnish Communist Party - especially Jaakko Laakso and Esko Seppänen.
      The confrontation culminated in early 2005 when Siimes said at her party’s programme seminar "I have never been a communist, or any kind of socialist."
      She said that leading the party had long caused her "physical pain".
      Siimes quit the party leadership in March, and she was replaced last month by Matti Korhonen.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Left Alliance chooses MP Martti Korhonen as its new chairman (15.5.2006)
  Suvi-Anne Siimes tenders resignation over split in Left Alliance (2.3.2006)
  Left Alliance leader Suvi-Anne Siimes announces resignation (1.3.2006)
  Left Alliance leader says party must lose either reformers or conservatives (28.2.2006)

Links:
  Pharma industry Finland

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