Private wedding, public divorce

PERSPECTIVE

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By Pekka Vuoristo
     
      The discussion about the recent "secret" wedding of Foreign Trade and Development Minister Paula Lehtomäki (Centre) went a little bit off the rails at the point when people started pondering whether Ms. Lehtomäki's political career would take a dive if she starts producing children. The gender equality faction got annoyed, and it is hard not to see why.
      It remains to be seen, as they say, how party chairmanship or ministerial duties and motherhood can be made to work together. Then again, in the not so distant past a Finnish Prime Minister took paternity leave - and even recommended it to his British colleague.
     
A more exciting thread of the debate has been the matter of why the media were so astonished - and even rather miffed - at the attempt to keep the lid on the wedding and on the identity of the minister's husband.
      There have been snide remarks that the journalists just got bent out of shape because they were not made aware of the event in enough time beforehand. This could be true, too, but there is a more important viewpoint: a minister is not an ordinary private individual.
      The public has to be able to be confident that a minister of state does not have any connections that could hinder the carrying out of his or her duties or jeopardise the credibility of the office. For this reason, for instance, ministers are obliged at regular intervals to keep Parliament informed of their financial commitments and stock portfolios.
     
If a minister wishes the identity of his or her spouse to remain a closely-guarded secret, then the journalist has a direct responsibility to be astonished, and the suspicions of members of the public have every reason to be aroused.
      One could of course argue conversely that it is sweet that a minister wishes to keep his or her private life private, but equally one could ask what there is to hide in the identity of the spouse, or what the spouse has to hide.
      This is not merely theory, either. In 2000 the Social Democrat MP Virpa Puisto was within a few days of taking up an appointment as Minister of Labour after a cabinet reshuffle, but she backed out when negative reports appeared in the press about the financial affairs of her businessman husband.
      Whether Puisto's choice of action was right or wrong, it indicates that a minister's private life is - where applicable - also a public and political matter.
     
It can also be - under certain circumstances - a political act when a minister separates from his or her spouse.
      At the press conference he held on Wednesday, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen drew a line: he considered that he was obliged by his position to tell people that this was happening, but nothing much more. By coming before the cameras, Vanhanen of course also did what he could in the situation by way of PR management and damage control.
      Vanhanen was also asked whether some third party was the cause for the break-up of his marriage. A political colleague might not have had the nerve to pose such a question, but a political journalist did ask it.
      That kind of a third party could be a political matter, or then not - depending on the person's identity.
     
There are so many divorced people in Finland - and in the Centre Party - that there is nothing very freakish about the Vanhanens. Besides, Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen underwent a distinctly splashy divorce from his first wife while in office.
      Nonetheless, we shall be hearing a good deal more about the Vanhanens' divorce. If Matti Vanhanen intends to stand in the 2006 Presidential Elections, then public relations management skills are now very much the order of the day.
     
In the last election, "family values" were used by supporters of Esko Aho (Centre Party) as a stick with which to beat Tarja Halonen, who was at the time in a live-in relationship with Pentti Arajärvi. The couple eventually married in August, some months after Halonen had taken office. During the campaign, the Halonen camp had hit back by suggesting that Aho was a "Nokia handset daddy", and consequently that the family idyll was being oversold.
      Vanhanen, too, has been closely associated with traditional family values. If he runs, this is one area of life that campaign managers will have to approach from a new angle.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.4.2005
     
The author is a political staff journalist with Helsingin Sanomat


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen to divorce after long marriage (7.4.2005)
  Virpa Puisto turns down Labour Minister position (18.2.2000)

PEKKA VUORISTO / Helsingin Sanomat
pekka.vuoristo@hs.fi