PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Sauli Niinistö – a lone star

New head of state is a 63-year-old lawyer and former Finance Minister

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By Teija Sutinen
     
      Sauli Niinistö, 63, who has been elected as Finland’s 12th President, is a man of action for whom politics is about resolving practical problems, and not about pontificating over ideologies.
      Fixing the world is not his main field, and he prefers to take an everyday approach on matters. A good indication of this was Niinistö’s own comment at the moment of victory on Sunday evening.
      “It’s not the end of the world, but it also isn’t the beginning”, Niinistö said in consolation to Pekka Haavisto, while defining his own situation with just one sentence.
     
Niinistö is basically an economist whose basic philosophy states that finances that are entrusted into one’s care need to be handled more meticulously than one’s own - be it the economy of a small town, a country, or Parliament.
      Niinistö’s reputation for attention to detail has made him popular, especially now that he has also managed to give the impression that he is above everyday politics.
     
Niinistö, who hails from Salo, did not work particularly hard at school, but he studied law at the University of Turku, and completed his degree in 1977.
      Niinistö got hooked on the law. He has described how a complicated legal case is like a puzzle, and solving it brings intellectual satisfaction.
      Niinistö continues to approach matters through the law, and this often makes his speeches difficult to understand.
     
Niinistö, who set up his own legal practice, was swayed to get involved in municipal politics in Salo. He ran for Parliament twice before he was elected in 1987.
      In Parliament he had a few trusted friends with whose help he started to distinguish himself in the National Coalition Party’s group. He sought out visible tasks and managed to rise to the post of chairman of the Constitutional Law Committee at a time when the committee prepared a statement on allegations of malfeasance by Minister of Trade and Industry Kauko Juhantalo (Centre).
      In 1994 Niinistö became the chairman of the National Coalition Party after Pertti Salolainen. The party was splintered, public support was declining, and its finances were limping along.
     
The life of the newly-elected chairman took the worst possible turn: his wife Marja-Leena died in a traffic accident while driving to the opening of the party’s election campaign.
      Niinistö himself has described the time following the death of his wife in a most heart-rending manner in his book Viiden vuoden yksinäisyys (“Five Years’ Solitude”).
      The fresh widower was elected to Parliament, and despite its setback at the polls, the National Coalition Party joined the rainbow coalition government of Paavo Lipponen (SDP), and Niinistö inevitably got a ministerial portfolio.
     
At home in Salo, he ploughed on as the single parent of two sons.
      For family reasons, he served as Minister of Justice for just under a year before taking on the more laborious task of Minister of Finance.
      In that post he was impatient and hard, axeing ministers’ proposals for additional budget items, under the protective gaze of Prime Minister Lipponen.
      State finances were turned from deficit to surplus during his record-long ministerial term from 1996-2003, and the people became familiar with his style and his southwest Finnish accent.
     
The National Coalition Party begged Niinistö to run for President in the election of 2000.
      To the chagrin of many, he refused, referring to himself as a semi-rambunctious widower.
      Niinistö did not run in the parliamentary elections of 2003, and instead took on the post of Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg.
      Niinistö had a close escape in late 2004, while he and his sons were vacationing in Khao Lak in Thailand, when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the area and more or less flattened everything. Niinistö and his children survived only by clinging on to a telephone pole as the water rose around them.
     
It was easier to persuade Niinistö to run for President in 2006, and the National Coalition Party ran a more professional campaign than before, with a slogan proclaiming Niinistö to be a “workers’ president”.
      Although Niinistö lost narrowly to Tarja Halonen, the election sparked a new rise of the National Coalition Party.
      Niinistö was well-positioned to win votes for the party in the next parliamentary elections, and did so, amassing a quite phenomenal personal pot.
      After the elections, he again resumed his enigmatic behaviour, keeping the people in his party in suspense over whether or not he would seek the post of Minister for Foreign Affairs that he had been offered, or if he would take the post of Speaker of Parliament.
     
The situation was difficult for the party’s young chairman Jyrki Katainen, for whom the veteran’s return to the government would have been awkward.
      Niinistö agreed to be the Speaker, but he gave the impression that he was not really satisfied. His relations with Katainen remain somewhat distant.
     
As the Speaker of Parliament, Niinistö was in his element, challenging how Parliament was administered, and how it spent money.
      The reform was left unfinished, but Niinistö again managed to rise above other politicians in the eyes of the people. This impression was enhanced by Niinistö’s occasional barbs thrown at Katainen’s government.
      Relationships with women, including one Centre Party Member of Parliament, added flavour to the image of the widower.
      In 2009 he married Jenni Haukio, who is considerably younger than himself.
      The couple have settled in Espoo along with their Boston terrier Lennu.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.2.2012


Previously in HS International Edition:
  PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Sauli Niinistö, 63, is Finland´s 12th President, after defeating Pekka Haavisto by a wide margin of 62.6% to 37.4% (6.2.2012)
  PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Sauli Niinistö´s dominance was unprecedented (6.2.2012)

See also:
  COMMENTARY: One man - rather more than one vote (27.3.2007)
  Sauli Niinistö lives an austere and quiet life in Luxembourg (11.10.2005)
  Niinistö makes triumphant return to politics (19.3.2007)
  Tarja Halonen elected to second term as President after close race (30.1.2006)
  Conservative candidate wants Finnish workers to unite and elect him President (27.10.2005)

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