Mari Kiviniemi chosen as new Centre Party leader and prospective PM

Timo Laaninen trounces incumbent Jarmo Korhonen in race for party secretary's job

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On Saturday the Centre Party's party congress in Lahti duly elected the advance favourite, Minister of Public Administration and Local Government Mari Kiviniemi, to become the party's new chairman.
      Kiviniemi will also take over from the outgoing chairman Matti Vanhanen as Finland's new Prime Minister, for the ten-month period leading to parliamentary elections in April 2011.
      Kiviniemi becomes only the second woman to hold the prime minister's post, after another Centre Party leader Anneli Jäätteenmäki, who was briefly PM in 2003.
     
When the time came to vote for a new chairman from among the four candidates, in the first round Kiviniemi (1,109 votes, 46%) and Mauri Pekkarinen, the Minister of Economic Affairs (771 votes, 32%) both progressed comfortably at the expense of former party chairman and Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen (287 votes) and MP Timo Kaunisto (234 votes).
      In a run-off against Pekkarinen, Kiviniemi then secured 1,357 votes to Pekkarinen's 1,035.
     
Mari Kiviniemi, 41, has been in Parliament since 1995, initially serving three terms in the Vaasa constituency.
      She was elected again in 2007, this time from Helsinki, where she now lives. Aside from her current ministerial appointment (held since 2007), she was Minister for Foreign Trade and Development for six months in 2005-2006 in the first government led by Matti Vanhanen.
      Kiviniemi is married and has two underage children.
     
Speaking immediately after her election, Kiviniemi declared she was ready to lead the Centre Party to victory in the elections next spring.
      She said she believed that when the dust has settled, the party will go forward from the congress with a united front.
      The defeated Pekkarinen echoed her remarks about the party's need to pull together after a turbulent period in the past couple of years, which has seen not only a fall in support but a general loss of confidence within the party faithful.
     
This year's congress was clearly looking to provide a new start, and two of the three vice-chairman to be chosen on Saturday in the wake of Kiviniemi's selection are fresh faces.
      The three vice-chairs are MPs Tuomo Puumala (28) and Timo Kaunisto (47), and 26-year-old ministerial aide Annika Saarikko.
      Only Puumala was in the outgoing trio of vice-chairmen, and Timo Kaunisto - who had campaigned in the chairmanship election as a reformer - declared his interest in the deputy's position only in mid-afternoon after it became clear his bid for the chairmanship was doomed to failure.
      In contrast to Kaunisto's reaction, veteran Centrist Paavo Väyrynen - who is also the honorary chairman of the party - left the hall without making any statement and apparently took no further part in the gathering.
     
The sweeping changes at the top in the Centre Party did not end here.
      Almost equal interest was generated by the contest to become party secretary.
      The incumbent Jarmo Korhonen has been widely blamed for much of the recent malaise within the party, but even so, the resounding defeat he suffered at the hands of Timo Laaninen - the editor-in-chief of the party newspaper Suomenmaa - came as something of a surprise.
     
Timo Laaninen powered home, securing 1675 votes from delegates to Korhonen's 570.
      Laaninen, 55, has previously worked as a political journalist and as a political aide to several Centre Party cabinet ministers, including Mauri Pekkarinen, Anneli Jäätteenmäki, and Matti Vanhanen.
     
In practice, what will happen next is that Matti Vanhanen will meet with President Tarja Halonen on June 18th with a view to seeking her permission for his resignation as Prime Minister.
      In all probability, Mari Kiviniemi will then become PM and will head the four-party coalition government from June 21st until the end of the electoral term.
      The other major partner in the coalition, the moderate conservative National Coalition Party, has not voiced any objections to the changeover at the helm.
      The NCP also held their own party gathering in Jyväskylä at the weekend, and Jyrki Katainen, the Minister of Finance, was re-elected unopposed as chairman.
      Katainen noted that he would have no problems whatsoever working alongside Kiviniemi, who has in any event been a very close colleague for the past two years, since her current ministerial portfolio has been part of the Ministry of Finance since 2008.
     
Kiviniemi's selection to the Centre Party leadership is bound to galvanise the race towards the next general election, as the Centre Party seek to escape from the public approval doldrums brought by their recent travails and predominantly bad publicity.
      Echoing remarks in a similar vein by her counterpart in the opposition Social Democrats Jutta Urpilainen, Kiviniemi noted in a keynote speech on Sunday that the SDP and the National Coalition Party had envisioned they might join forces after the next election if the Centrists met their anticipated defeat, and that therefore the only course of action was to bounce back strongly and win a famous victory at the ballot-box.
      Urpilainen had painted equally defiant pictures of an alleged done-deal between the Centre and the National Coalition Party, who also naturally wish to improve on their solid showing in 2007.
     
Hence we now have three major parties all striving fiercely to come out on top next April.
      Some have even suggested that it could be the conservatives of the National Coalition who have most to do in terms of looking over their shoulders - they enjoyed large gains in 2007, but many of their sitting MPs were elected by a very narrow majority, and they will have to seek a mandate from the public next year without the considerable vote-catching allure of the current Speaker of Parliament Sauli Niinistö, who has already announced he will not be standing again in 2011.
      Before then, however, the new PM has promised to call together a broad-based seminar in the autumn, including representatives of the opposition, to look for ways out of the recession and to strengthen Finland's employment prospects.
     
     
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More on this subject:
 2,500 Centre Party congress delegates gather in Lahti for leadership decisions over the weekend
 Centre Party supporters allege media bias against party

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