Prime Minister hounded by accusations of lying

Vanhanen leaves for EU summit

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Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) sharply denied claims that he had lied to Parliament on the campaign finance issue at a Parliamentary question time last year.
      Accusations of lying took up 13 minutes of a Parliamentary debate on Wednesday, whose main subject was the economy. The issue was the main theme of Vanhanen’s day all the way to the press conference linked with the EU summit, where the Prime Minister flew later in the day.
     
“I will not tolerate it”, the Prime Minister said, commenting on accusations from some Members of Parliament. At the press conference he made it clear that he felt the accusations are “completely inappropriate”. “I will not accept the label of a liar”, he added, and described the debate as “political”.
      The accusations of mendacity concerned a statement made during Question Time in Parliament a year earlier, when he said that he did not recall an event that took place at the Prime Minister’s official residence in 2007 concerning the activities of KMS, an organisation that was raising funds for various Parliamentary candidates. This year his recollection of the event seems to have improved somewhat.
     
Vanhanen now says that a question by MP Jukka Gustafsson (SDP) had claimed that the composition of the meeting was different from what it actually was, which confused the issue. In addition, Vanhanen had recalled erroneously that he had met the businessmen in Parliament.
      “A year and a half later, I unfortunately did not remember the location. There had probably been 2,000 other meetings in the interim.”
     
Vanhanen stuck to his story through all of the questioning with the usual calmness that he shows in difficult situations.
      MP Gustafsson called for a special audit of Nova Group.
      Vanhanen’s explanations did not satisfy the opposition. Social Democratic Party leader Jutta Urpilainen accused Vanhanen of quibbling and hair-splitting. She questioned the Prime Minister’s sense of judgement, noting that he had discussed election contributions with people convicted of economic crimes.
     
The Parliamentary group of the Centre Party discussed the matter for about two hours. The Centre Party MPs expressed their continued confidence in Vanhanen. They did not discuss how they felt about Korhonen, who serves at the pleasure of the party congress.
      The Centre Party proposed to other political groups an initiative that would make it mandatory to disclose all political donations of a value higher than EUR 5,000. The proposal did not win support from other parties.
      Centre Party MPs had only one message in mind all day. They were eager to shed light on the main supporters of the SDP and National Coalition Party.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Prime Minister denies accusations of lying over campaign finance issue (17.6.2009)
  Centre Party gets extensive funding from business (16.6.2009)
  Vanhanen expects detailed report from Centre Party secretary on 2007 election funding (15.6.2009)
  Centre Party silent about major contributor (12.6.2009)

See also:
  Millions in municipal pension funds invested in Nova Group project

Helsingin Sanomat