NEWS ANALYSIS: Companies yearn for export-promoting president

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By Teija Sutinen
     
      ”The days are long gone when company managers pondered what presidential candidate to support, and how to do it”, says Risto E.J. Penttilä, managing director of the Central Chamber of Commerce.
      This does not mean that the future resident of Mäntyniemi would be inconsequential.
     
Corporations and the organisations that promote their interests no longer wave the flag for anyone or campaign against anyone. Things were different in 1981 when Urho Kekkonen had to retire for health reasons.
      At the height of his power Kekkonen was kind of a corporate executive for Finland PLC, as economic historian Markku Kuisma characterised him. Nothing significant happened in Finnish heavy industry without Kekkonen’s knowledge.
     
Corporate executives fearing change drew up a statement calling for the continuity of trade with the Soviet Union and existing trade policy.
      The main purpose of this was to support the Centre Party’s Ahti Karjalainen for president. The corporate busybody division did not trust Mauno Koivisto (SDP).
      The campaign turned into a fiasco because of Karjalainen’s drinking problem. He was not even considered suitable by his own party, which chose Johannes Virolainen as its candidate.
     
The public support given to Karjalainen was the last time that the Finnish business community openly took issue with the election of a president. Their fingers ended up so badly burned that since then, they have made do with jaded criticism of the president in office.
      In a small country, few will publicly criticise the president. The greatest furore was caused a few years ago by the selfsame Risto E.J. Penttilä who is now at the Central Chamber of Commerce.
      Near the end of Tarja Halonen’s first term as president, when Penttilä was still the head of the delegate council of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA, he wrote in Helsingin Sanomat that Halonen was too enthusiastic about healing the world, and that her activities clashed with her duties as Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces, among other things.
     
Now Penttilä is saying that the elections two weeks from now are unspectacular from the point of view of Finnish business:
      “The President no longer has power. That which is left has nothing to do with the operational preconditions of business life.”
     
Another possible reason for the serenity of the business community could be that the favourite in opinion polls is Sauli Niinistö (Nat. Coalition Party), whose campaign puts an emphasis on work and business.
      It would be interesting to see what the business community would do today if the front-runner in the opinion polls were a candidate who wanted to take Finland out of the euro system.
     
The expectations of the business community for a president revolve around promoting prestige.
      During her 12 years in office Tarja Halonen has made an average of two trips abroad each year with an accompanying delegation of corporate executives.
      The corporate entourage is interested in places where the presence of the President opens doors and brings out decision-makers on the other side who have significance from the point of view of a company’s exports. Such countries include Russia, China, and many countries of Southeast Asia and Caucasia.
     
Joining a presidential junket is not something that business executives do for fun, or to suck up to the leader. There has to be some real potential benefit.
      For instance, Halonen tried to assemble a corporate delegation for her trip to West Africa in 2009, but that corner of the world was not of interest to Finnish exporters.
     
Halonen is praised for being relatively active, but she is not seen as being as enthusiastic a promoter of exports as her predecessor Martti Ahtisaari was.
      One executive who has accompanied Halonen on a number of occasions told Helsingin Sanomat that the feeling that “here we are, in the same group and with the same goal”, has been missing on the trips.
      Ahtisaari enjoyed the company of business leaders so much that after his presidency he joined the boards of directors of the electronics company Elcoteq and the paper manufacturer UPM Kymmene.
     
Halonen has not considered it necessary to play the role of a close friend of corporations. On the contrary, she has criticised companies who cut their workforces for showing poor social responsibility.
     
Federation of Finnish Enterprises president Mikko Simolinna says that Halonen took part in an event marking Entrepreneur’s Day for the very first time last autumn, even though she had been invited several times.
      Konecranes CEO Pekka Lundmark, president of the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries, would like to see the president take a role as a figurehead in the marketing of Finland as a country of investment and jobs.
      So that is the role of the CEO of Finland PLC - that of marketing the Finland brand.


See also:
  Halonen offers Mongolia mining technology and support in building democracy (2.9.2011)

TEIJA SUTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
teija.sutinen@hs.fi