The Social Democrats have a genuine problem

By Janne Virkkunen
     
      In Finnish political life, as elsewhere, there seems to be one rule that holds and goes on holding.
      After a strong leader leaves the stage, parties have great difficulties in adapting to the new era: a powerful chairman who has held down the seat for a long time leaves behind a vacuum in which his or her successor often has trouble getting things under control.
      When the long-serving Social Democratic Party strongman Kalevi Sorsa announced he was giving up the chair in 1987, the SDP embarked on a series of misadventures that lasted for years.
     
The first to try his hand as chairman was Pertti Paasio, but he was dropped after the resounding defeat in the 1991 general election.
      Paasio was replaced by Ulf Sundqvist, a former minister and the CEO of the now-defunct STS Bank. Sundqvist went under in the banking crisis that hit Finland in the early 1990s.
      It was not until Paavo Lipponen took over in 1993 that matters calmed down at SDP headquarters.
      The mess had lasted six years by then and the Social Democrats were in opposition, as the country was led into the EU by Esko Aho's centre-right coalition government.
     
The Centrists, for their part, suffered similar troubles when Esko Aho, the defeated candidate in the 2000 Presidential Election, decided to step aside from active politics in 2002.
      Anneli Jäätteenmäki won the race to succeed Aho as chair of the Centre Party, and she then managed to become Prime Minister after the parliamentary elections of March 2003.
      Jäätteenmäki's fall from grace followed only months later, in the wake of the so-called "Iraqgate" leaks, and she tendered her resignation from the PM's job and shortly afterwards handed over the stewardship of the party, taking up a seat in the European Parliament.
      Matti Vanhanen rose from the shadows to become Prime Minister in mid-June and chairman of the Centre Party in October 2003, and he has managed since then to keep the party relatively peaceful.
     
Crossing over to the moderate right of the political spectrum, the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) has not been immune to such problems, either.
      The party slid into a leadership struggle when Sauli Niinistö, who had run the conservatives with an iron hand since 1994, decided to step aside in 2001 and left a year or two later for the Board of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg.
      Ville Itälä led Kokoomus into the 2003 elections and stood down after the party took a beating and lost six seats and a place in the government.
      After Itälä, the chair was seized by a previously largely unknown figure, Jyrki Katainen, under whose direction the conservatives won a resounding victory in the 2007 parliamentary elections and hauled themselves back in to second place behind the Centre Party, whom they duly joined in government.
      Once again, after a turbulent period, the National Coalition Party is enjoying stable conditions.
     
When Lipponen withdrew in 2005, the Social Democrats chose Eero Heinäluoma as his anointed heir.
      Heinäluoma's rise to the top of the Finnish political tree was near-ballistic: he moved from a senior post in the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) to become SDP Party Secretary in 2002, won a seat in the 2003 general election, and two years on he was elected to continue the course set by Lipponen.
      Heinäluoma picked out Maari Feldt-Ranta as his Party Secretary.
     
The SDP structures held up well enough as far as the 2004 municipal elections, when they took an emphatic win, mainly at the expense of the Centrists.
      In the presidential election of 2006 the party just about managed to rebuff the challenge from Sauli Niinistö and secure a second term for Tarja Halonen, but by the time the parliamentary polls came around in March of last year, the wheels were ready to fall off - and fall off they did.
      The SDP suffered a historic defeat at the ballot-box and slumped into third place in the country behind the Centre Party and the resurgent National Coalitionists.
      The Social Democrats' election campaign was little short of dreadful, and the party saw its 25% support in the country eroded by around 4%-points in the space of a few short months.
     
In the run-up to the elections, the SDP spotlighted Heinäluoma in particular, and his credibility problems in the eyes of the public were brought home to even the hardest-boiled party members in the days after the votes had been counted.
      The bruising defeat ended 12 years in which the Social Democrats had been one of the two parties forming the backbone of the governing coalition, and it brought the party with a jolt to where it is now: where are the young adherents, where are the office workers, where are the university-educated people struggling on short-term contracts?
      Not voting for the SDP, in any event.
     
Further pain was felt in the upper echelons of the party earlier this month when Helsingin Sanomat published a poll of the political affiliations of Finnish voters under the age of thirty.
      The figures showed incontrovertibly that the Social Democrats had lost a lot of ground among the younger members of the electorate, slipping to 4th place behind the Centre Party, the National Coalition, and the Greens.
     
Now that the party chairman and secretary have both announced they are throwing in the towel and will not seek re-election, the SDP have an opportunity for a genuine house-clearing exercise, if only they are able to make the best of the situation.
      The Social Democrats' problem is that the industrial society is giving way to the post-industrial information society and developing increasingly in the direction of office workers.
      An excessive leaning on the structures of the past industrial society and on SAK-led trade unions has left the clerical staff to one side.
      An overly strong traditional bond with the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions is making the SDP into a political movement that stands for the status quo and the defence of entrenched positions.
     
The problem facing the Finnish Social Democrats has its own international dimension. Social Democrat and Labour parties are in difficulties in other parts of Europe, too.
      Equally, the globalising world leaves little scope to pursue other kinds of policies. With elbow-room in short supply, it is necessary to find the sort of incoming party leadership that will at least look as if it is reform-minded.
      When the party congress meets in Hämeenlinna in June, the Social Democrats will now have a whole heap of chairmanship candidates to choose from. They will no longer have to content themselves with a situation in which old warhorse and former Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja challenges the incumbent and is beaten down by the party machine.
      The situation for the SDP is wide open, and the new leadership chosen in June will have a chance to flex their muscles quite quickly, at the municipal elections in October.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.2.2008
     
The author is editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  HS-Gallup: SDP has lost considerable ground among young voters (6.2.2008)
  SDP working group faults party leaders for election campaign failures (15.6.2007)
  SDP sets up committee to analyse causes of election defeat (21.3.2007)
  Party secretary Eero Heinäluoma chosen as new Social Democratic Party leader (10.6.2005)
  Paavo Lipponen to quit Social Democratic Party leadership post in June (10.3.2005)
  Social Democrats emerge on top in municipal elections (25.10.2004)
  Eero Heinäluoma to give up SDP leadership (11.2.2008)