Prime Minister Vanhanen engaged
Vanhanen downplays significance of e-mail flap
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Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) and Sirkka Mertala have announced their engagement. According to the late-edition tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, the two bought rings at a jewellery store in Espoo on Thursday.
According to Mertala, the engagement took place in the traditional manner, with Vanhanen making the proposal. She would not reveal any details on Friday morning, saying, with a laugh, that they were personal.
Mertala said that she would continue her work as development director of the Tapiola financial concern, and that she would take part in official functions alongside the Prime Minister on a case-by-case basis.
Vanhanen and Mertala have been dating for slightly over a year. They have appeared together at a number of functions, the first of which was a diplomatic dinner last April hosted by President Tarja Halonen.
The engagement takes place at an awkward time for the Prime Minister.
On Thursday Vanhanen admitted to having sent e-mail messages to a woman who had been a candidate of the Centre Party in last year’s municipal elections. The woman in question said that she found them to be suggestive.
Vanhanen said at a press conference on Thursday that there was some humour in the messages, but that it was not particularly inappropriate.
Some of the messages touched upon Vanhanen’s candidate number in the elections, which was 69.
Vanhanen indicated that before the elections there had been plenty of “joking and smirking” over the sexual connotations of the candidate number.
The woman with whom the Prime Minister had exchanged e-mails had told the gossip magazine 7 päivää that she had received messages from Vanhanen which she found to be suggestive.
Vanhanen recalled that the e-mail exchange took place on one evening in October.
The Prime Minister said that he regretted any possible embarrassment that he may have caused.
Vanhanen had asked the woman in question to delete the messages, as he had done himself. On Thursday, he clarified that he would not object to having the whole chain of messages published; he said that he suspects that she had kept the messages, because the magazine article had such detailed descriptions of them.
Vanhanen had first met the woman at the opening of the Centre Party’s municipal election campaign, and later she had told him that she was a Centre Party candidate in the elections.
Vanhanen had felt a need to thank the woman for her candidacy and sought to encourage her on her political career. The messages then gravitated toward the sexual position suggested by Vanhanen’s candidate number, which he said he had learned to talk about after hearing a good deal of innuendo.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 27.3.2009 - TODAY |
 Prime Minister Vanhanen engaged |
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