Presidential Election
If Lapland were independent, Paavo Väyrynen would be President...

Voters in Lapland's Keminmaa digest their favourite son's defeat

Paavo Väyrynen

Timo Rimpisalo

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By Tapio Mainio in Keminmaa
     
      The atmosphere over morning coffee in the café attached to the Keminmaa Teboil service station is subdued, even apathetic, on the Monday morning after the election dust has settled.
      The members in good standing of the gas station's "local parliament" are quietly digesting the narrow defeat of their favourite son, Paavo Väyrynen of the Centre Party, who collected 17.5% of the vote and 537,000 votes, but found himself in third place and out of the running.
      The candidate himself made no comment whatsoever to the media on Monday.
     
"The southerners played Väyrynen out of the game and the second round", says local man Jouni Savolainen, 54.
      "It was a big mistake when Paavo tried to get elected as an MP from a constituency down south. That didn't go well, did it?" declares Martti Kanto, 67.
      Väyrynen collected only 3,000 votes in the Uusimaa constituency and failed to get a seat in Parliament in the April 2011 elections, which - if we are honest about it - makes his strong showing in the presidential election all the more impressive, despite the negative outcome.
     
In any event, "the people down south" are clearly to blame.
      "The phobia towards the Centre Party and Väyrynen in the south is still pervasive. We're just trying to get over this unfortunate result", says the Chairman of the Keminmaa branch of the Centre Party, Raimo Arponen.
      He was among those organising the troops locally for the election campaign.
      Arponen says nevertheless that the mood in the run-up to the poll was buoyant.
      Hopes were high that Väyrynen could make it third time lucky and reach the run-off stage.
      He also stood as a candidate in 1988, when he was second but far behind the re-elected Mauno Koivisto, and in 1994, when he finished third behind eventual winner Martti Ahtisaari and Elisabeth Rehn.
     
If Lapland were independent, Väyrynen would be elected President, at least in the considered opinion of the gas station parliamentarians.
      In this latest election, Väyrynen took top spot in every single municipality in the electoral district, and 43% of the vote all told.
      In the Oulu electoral district, too, he was out in front of the field, with 35.2% of the vote, compared with 27.5% for Sauli Niinistö and just 14.3% for Pekka Haavisto.
      In Keminmaa itself, Väyrynen scooped up 58% of the 5,200 votes cast.
      Turnout here was 77.5%, above the national average and the highest anywhere in Lapland.
     
Here in the rural north, Väyrynen collected support from across party lines.
      Unfortunately for him, the north is sparsely populated, and the admittedly impressive numbers counted for little against the onslaught of Haavisto and Niinistö voters in the cities of the south.
      The candidate himself seemed to know the game was up, even when he led Haavisto by several points on the advance votes: his lead was quite simply not big enough, and it is a well-known fact that rural voters are more prone to vote in advance than city people.
      Early returns on the night, again mainly from small rural constituencies in the north and east, kept him in front for a while, but as a hugely experienced politician he must have known it was never going to last, especially with the late surge enjoyed by Haavisto in the last week of the campaign.
     
"Vayrynen ran an incredibly heavy campaign. What other politician would have been able to come through it in one piece?" asks an admiring Timo Rimpisalo, 62, who sits in the Keminmaa Municipal Council as a representative of the Left Alliance.
      Rimpisalo, who lives close to Väyrynen in Keminmaa, has followed his neighbour's political career over the decades, ever since Väyrynen first entered Parliament back in 1970 at the age of just 23.
      "The younger generation swung this election in Haavisto's favour in the closing strides. Ultimately this was an election about individuals, and the start of a new era. It remains to be seen what the people up here in Lapland will do with their votes in the second round, or whether they will just stay at home", he says.
     
Paavo Väyrynen sits on the Keminmaa Municipal Council, where the Centre Party enjoy the majority of the seats.
      Väyrynen used the party's majority to re-arrange council sessions from Thursdays to Mondays, so that he could more easily make it to meetings.
      Even so, he has not always been present. "Many times his seat has been taken by a deputy. Väyrynen pulls the strings via telephone", says Rimpisalo.
      The defeated candidate may have more time for local politics now, though Väyrynen's success in saving the Centre Party's face - he polled appreciably better than the party did in the 2011 Parliamentary elections - could mean he is not done with the national arena quite yet.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / Edited from an article first published in print 24.1.2012


Links:
  Paavo Väyrynen (Wikipedia)
  Keminmaa (Wikipedia)
  Presidential Election 2012 - Voting in Lapland, where Paavo Väyrynen collected 43.0% of the votes cast (Ministry of Justice Elections Portal)

TAPIO MAINIO / Helsingin Sanomat
tapio.mainio@hs.fi