In search of alternatives on Election Day
|
|
|
By Erkki Pennanen
It is parliamentary election time again. This also means that I will have to explain to assorted diplomats and foreign journalists what the current setup is in Finland heading into the vote, what are the main bones of contention, and what are the alternatives that the various parties offer on these issues.
In particular they are probably going to be interested in NATO, in nuclear power, and in the make-up of the next government. In everyone's mind will be the one big question: what changes might the election bring to Finnish policies?
I urge the reader who follows Finnish politics to put himself or herself into my shoes as the one answering these questions.
What is it that divides the Centre Party, the Social Democrats, and the conservatives of the National Coalition Party in this election campaign? What are the key points of debate and the parties' answers to them? How will the country's political landscape and policies change depending on which parties form the next coalition government?
These are good questions, but what about the answers to them and the reality that lies behind those answers?
You try explaining to a foreign observer that the Finnish political parties are very close to one another and that the major blocs are to a great extent in agreement on the fundamental election issues. There are no great bones of contention out there.
The framework of the next government will probably be made up of the party that is adjudged to have won the election and the party that comes in second, and there will be no special changes on the policy front. The country is doing very nicely, thank you. There is one cause for concern, of course, in that voter turnout has been declining steadily for some years.
Does the description sound exaggerated? Am I twisting reality? Hardly.
I'll take a few recent examples of how the political booby-traps set by one or other party for the others are defused in public.
The opposition National Coalition Party called for a parliamentary interpellation on the government's energy policy in order to put the Centre Party up against the wall on its stance on nuclear power.
Prime Minister and Centre Party leader Matti Vanhanen came back immediately and said that the basic questions of nuclear energy had been thrashed out years ago in connection with the decision to go ahead with a fifth nuclear reactor, and that there was no need for further debate; the Centre Party takes a pragmatic view on the subject.
But just hold it there for a second, Chairman Vanhanen. Since the initial discussion in depth in 1992 or even since the debate in 2002 that led to the resolve to build Olkiluoto III, a number of years' worth of new voters have entered the political arena, some of them being Centre Party voters.
Even if I am among the supporters of nuclear power, in my view it wrongs those new voters, and indeed the other members of the electorate, to simply shrug off the debate on nuclear power on such grounds.
The same thing goes for the NATO discussion, which the parties have been decidely reluctant to wage through factual arguments. Some would like to see it put off until the moment when the next security policy report is prepared, after the election. To be fair, Matti Vanhanen is no longer in this camp.
Vanhanen announced at the Centre Party's campaign launch that it was already time the parties could say how they felt about this subject.
The clear Centre Party line is that no application for membership should be tendered, but that the option of joining should be kept on the table. The approach corresponds to the feelings of a majority of the population, and hence the Centrists are ready to join the NATO discussion on this footing.
The National Coalition Party would be for NATO membership, but they are not going to push the issue because the party does not believe the domestic political conditions will be ripe for it over the next four to eight years.
The SDP line is probably somewhere between these two.
It remains to be seen what kind of debate on NATO can be erected on these slim foundations.
And what of the discussion on coalition alternatives? The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Ilkka Kanerva from the National Coalition Party, issued a warning to party activists last week to guard against loose talk of centre-right cooperation and a centre-right government, because this would only be to the benefit of the "red-earth" parties, the Centre and the SDP.
What Kanerva meant was that the threat of a non-socialist coalition government would merely activate the Social Democrat faithful into battle and to the ballot-box against the bugbear of the centre-right coming to power.
Following this same logic, the National Coalition leadership should thus refuse to talk to voters about cooperation with the Centre Party and should instead concentrate only on maximising the party's own vote.
As in previous years, Helsingin Sanomat's Gallup surveys have asked prospective voters what they regard as the most important election themes. They are to a large extent the same as they were four years ago, regardless of the respondents' political affiliation.
Up at the top of the list are health care, care for the elderly, and unemployment, and right behind these three come the position of the poor and the problem of short-term contract work.
These themes are permanently central topics in the arena of public discussion. New issues raising their head and prompting debate are the availability and price of energy (triggered by much writing on the subject of late) and our preparedness for the ageing of the population.
From the perspective of the upcoming election battle, none of these themes can really be expected to generate much heat, since all the parties recognise the problems, but they do not challenge either one another or the voters by offering a variety of alternative measures to resolve them.
The last parliamentary election four years ago was turned into a "prime ministerial vote" in the wake of changes made to the Constitution.
The SDP weighed in with their experienced champion Paavo Lipponen, who was challenged as a prime ministerial candidate for the first time by a woman, the Centre Party's Anneli Jäätteenmäki.
Their head-to-head duel was excessively dominant during the entire election campaign.
This time around, the Centre Party has a clear favourite for the job in the present incumbent Matti Vanhanen. Neither the SDP's Eero Heinäluoma nor Jyrki Katainen at the head of the National Coalition Party can match up to Vanhanen in the public mind.
For this reason the Social Democrats in particular want to emphasise the fact that in the voters' view the person of the PM is not the key issue, but the party he represents. As it happens, this is true even according to the opinion poll findings.
Notwithstanding this, the fact is that the parliamentary elections are becoming more and more "personalised" at the expense of issues and substance.
Entertainment aspects and the use of dollops of folksy publicity associated with the individual candidates have gained ground considerably, at the same time as the advertising agencies have increasingly been brought into play to create images: "Almost as if you were voting for yourself."
According to a survey carried out in Sweden in connection with last autumn's general election there, the share of articles and factual "issues-writing" about the campaign in the major daily newspapers fell sharply by comparison with the previous election.
The fact that several papers switched over to the smaller tabloid format was - in the view of the researchers - only partially responsible for the phenomenon.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.1.2007
ERKKI PENNANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
erkki.pennanen@hs.fi
|
| 30.1.2007 - THIS WEEK |
 In search of alternatives on Election Day |
|
