Televised election debates are a pain

COMMENTARY

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By Juha Akkanen
     
      Over the Yuletide season, the TV channels took a break from their Presidential Election debates. So there's at least something to be said for "the Peace of Christmas".
      When one stares at the talking heads on the screen, all attempting to yell over one another, it is hard to believe that the political elite of Finland has been gathered in the studio. In fact what comes to mind more is some reality-TV format that has selected a group of kindergarten-age ADHD sufferers.
      The viewer, the potential voter, squirms in embarrassment on the sofa. For me at least, I do not want anyone coming into my home to shout like that, not even the next President of the Republic, and not even through the medium of my television set.
     
The TV debates have been assumed to be the critical factor in these elections, just as has happened several times before now. Thus far at least it does not look that way. I feel sorry for those who have to pick their candidate on the basis of the debates. A real debate is a far cry from these tedious yelling matches: the genuine differences of opinion that exist among the candidates do not come out in the least.
      Then again, maybe those differences are not so great in the first place, even if Sauli Niinistö, for instance, goes out of his way to make it look as if he is the one and only alternative to Tarja Halonen or Matti Vanhanen.
      On the other hand, it is hard to get a handle on Niinistö's own views, since he always prefaces what he has to say with excessively long introductions. By the time he gets around to the nub of the matter, others have stepped in and taken over. The climactic thought gets drowned in cacophony.
     
At the most recent gathering, Halonen at least tried to behave in a civilised manner when she pointed out to Niinistö that if he would be quiet for one instant, she would not have to talk over his words.
      Last time out, Matti Vanhanen also told a punning joke of sorts, although not many actually noticed it.
      He declared himself to be an impulsive Karelian, even though everybody knows that "pulseless grey Aryan" comes closer to an accurate description.
     
According to a questionnaire study carried out by Taloustutkimus for the weekly magazine Suomen Kuvalehti, in the view of the public at large Halonen, Niinistö, and Vanhanen have been the best media performers.
      I beg to disagree. If one had to make a choice on the strength of the TV-debates, then my vote would go to Heidi Hautala, Timo Soini, or Bjarne Kallis.
      The fault does not lie with the MCs in the studio. They can at worst be smacked across the knuckles for not daring to be quite as blunt and brusque with the incumbent President as they are with Independent outsider Arto Lahti, the only candidate to be on a kind of "write-in" ticket.
      This Lahti man, though... It is my firm conviction that a candidate should be obliged to collect at least 50,000 and preferably 100,000 names in his or her support before he is let loose on a presidential election as an independent. The current bar of 20,000 "supporters" is set altogether too low. How much do you want to bet that Lahti's pot in the first round of voting will fall below that 20,000?
     
One advantage of newspaper interviews and the like is that you can skip-read them, jumping over bits or coming back and reading the whole thing through again if necessary.
      With television panel debates, you would first need to record them in order to be able to fast-forward and rewind according to your taste. And nobody, but nobody, records an election debate unless they are political science students or someone doing a dissertation on mass communications.
      For quite a lot of people, a full-page interview in the paper may in any case turn out to be the sort of thing that gets torn out and put to one side for a moment when we have more time to spend on it. That "better moment" will probably surface during the spring-cleaning.
      The more I follow the discussions of the candidates, the more sensible Heidi Hautala's view seems to be. Hautala would remove from the President all the little real power the office has left.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.12.2005


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Poll: Halonen support remains strong, Niinistö still ahead of Vanhanen (2.1.2006)
  Niinistö and Vanhanen clash heavily over defence in election debate (22.12.2005)
  Presidential election debate heats up over EU defence (15.12.2005)

Links:
  Ministry of Justice Election Site (in English, contains list of candidates)

JUHA AKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
juha.akkanen@hs.fi