SDP working group faults party leaders for election campaign failures

print this

A Social Democratic Party working group examining the reasons for the party's disappointing showing in the March elections singles out party chairman Eero Heinäluoma and other party leaders, criticising their "indecisiveness" at the important phase of the campaign when Heinäluoma was named the party's candidate for Prime Minister last autumn.
      The working group, headed by Antti Kalliomäki, feels that the SDP did not ultimately make a decision as to whether or not to have an election focusing on who will be Prime Minister, and the candidacy also was not seen in the campaign itself.
      These are the conclusions that can be drawn from the working group's report, which is nearly finished. The paper will come before the SDP executive later this month.
     
The working group was set up to examine the reasons for the election setbacks suffered by the SDP in the March elections. The party saw its number of seats in Parliament reduced by eight, forcing the SDP to go into opposition.
      The working group has assessed the government polity of the SDP in the last term, its preparations for the elections, its campaigning, and the competitiveness of the other parties in the election battle.
      The team did not find much fault in the policies carried out by the SDP when it was in the government led by Centre Party leader Matti Vanhanen in the previous electoral term, 2003-2007.
     
The tone of the report becomes much more critical when the working group assesses preparations for the election campaign and the content of the campaign itself.
      The purpose had been to persuade the people that Finland can afford to invest in services in the coming term. When asked why such reforms had not already been implemented, the party was not able to give an answer.
      "Taking on the role of challenger from a position in the government did not prove to be sufficiently credible", the report points out.
      The party prepared carefully for an election battle that never came. The SDP was not able to adapt to unexpected events. Well before the elections, the SDP named the National Coalition Party as its main opponent, but the party behaved in an unexpected manner, and no real fight ensued.
      In the final phases the Social Democrats even considered switching main opponents and going after the Centre Party, but that did not succeed.
     
Already in early November the SDP named its chairman Eero Heinäluoma as its candidate for Prime Minister. However, the party never decided on launching a campaign focused on the PM issue.
      "If the election campaign had been built as a campaign for prime ministerial, it would have been necessary to challenge the holder of the office, in which case the natural constituency for the SDP Chairman would have been Uusimaa", states the report. The working group also says that indecision led to a situation in which there was no clear policy line on whether or not to focus on the race for Prime Minister.
      This assessment can be seen as fairly severe criticism toward Heinäluoma himself, who chose to run in the Helsinki electoral district instead of Uusimaa. In the elections of 2003 Heinäluoma had, in his capacity as Party Secretary at the time, managed the Prime Ministerial campaign of Paavo Lipponen.
      Now his role as a party leader was seen as "distant" and "cautious", although his mastery of facts and issues was praised.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Social Democratic MPs ponder implications of election setback (13.4.2006)
  Social Democratic MPs snub party chairman Heinäluoma (23.3.2007)
  Foreign Minister Tuomioja demands greater SDP self-criticism (22.3.2007)
  SDP sets up committee to analyse causes of election defeat (21.3.2007)

Helsingin Sanomat