National Coalition Party, Greens, and True Finns getting more members
SDP and Centre have been losing members for years
|
|
Of Finland’s political parties, only the National Coalition Party, the Greens, and the True Finns have seen their membership grow in recent years, according to the party secretaries of Finland’s Parliamentary parties who were approached on the matter by Helsingin Sanomat.
According to Taru Tujunen, secretary of the conservative National Coalition Party, growth in membership in the party began about five years ago. It was at about that time that the party put a stop to special membership drives.
According to Tujunen, work on the party's strategy, and political reforms have attracted new members.
Total membership in both the Social Democratic Party and the Centre Party has declined in recent years by about 2,000 members or less.
Party Secretary Jarmo Korhonen says that a few years ago, membership in the party was declining by ten thousand a year.
The Centre is the only party not to have a central register of members. Now such a register is being set up, and next year it should already be in use.
The Left Alliance and the Christian Democrats are also losing members at a steady pace.
Swedish People’s Party secretary Ulla Achen says that the number of members has remained fairly steady.
The number of members that a party has does not necessarily reflect their political weight, For instance, the Christian Democrats have more members than the Left Alliance does, but in Parliament, the Left Alliance has 17 seats, compared with seven for the Christian Democrats.
The Greens have slightly more members than the True Finns do, but the Greens are a government party, and the opposition True Finns are the smallest group in Parliament.
The Greens have long had problems getting even some of their active supporters to join the party as members, but Party Secretary Panu Laturi says that the situation is changing. The Greens no longer shun party politics as much as they used to.
The number of members that a party is primarily of financial importance. The more paying members a party has, the more the party is able to invest in election work.
However, state party subsidies are distributed on the basis of how many seats the party has in Parliament.
Social Democratic Party Secretary Ari Korhonen points out that party membership is also a factor in the commitment level of voters. Party members are more reliable as voters of the same party.
Korhonen says that the SDP gets about 1,500 new members each year. However, total membership is declining by 1,300 and 2,000 a year, especially through the death of old members.
The average age of the SDP membership is above 60.
Ari Korhonen predicts that the average age will soon decline, as the new members are mostly young.
The SDP membership reached its peak in 1976, when it claimed nearly 101,773 Finns as members.
Only the Centre Party can claim to have more than 100,000 members today. Jarmo Korhonen says that the party has 176,000 members. In 1983 the number was reportedly 330,000.
The lack of a centralised membership register has cast some doubt on the Centre’s reported membership figures.
It is commonly assumed that in years past, entire families were taken on as members of the Centre Party, often without the consent of some of the family members themselves. Jarmo Korhonen says that these are “isolated cases”.
However, it was not until the beginning of the decade that the Centre Party instituted a practice in which a new member is expected to confirm a desire to join the party with his or her signature.
For instance, Jarmo Pekkala administrative chief at the National Coalition Party, has experience of Centre Party membership.
”I was the chairman of the National Calition Party youth organisation in Laukkaa in 1967 when I learned that I was also a member of the Agrarian League (the earlier name of the Centre Party). My father was an active member of the Agrarian League, and apparently I had been accepted as a party member along with him”, Jarmo Pekkala recalls.
Helsingin Sanomat
|
| 4.8.2008 - TODAY |
 National Coalition Party, Greens, and True Finns getting more members |
|
