Trade union organisation SAK suffered for supporting Halonen in presidential election

Lauri Ihalainen

Tarja Halonen

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The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), the largest organization of wage earners in Finland, believes it suffered from the decision to support Tarja Halonen in the presidential election earlier this year. This was the finding of a recent poll ordered by the SAK.
      "We have received confirmation for the notion that supporting a presidential candidate or a political party does not really benefit the SAK or the labour union movement in general. Rather the opposite, in fact", explains Matti Tukiainen, head of the member services department at the SAK.
      The SAK Council, the organisation's highest decision-making body, made a unanimous decision in May of last year to support Halonen. "It was exceptional that the Council should take a stand on an issue such as the presidential election", Tukiainen points out.
      According to Tukiainen, it was a spontaneous decision made on the spur of the moment after Halonen had announced that she would be available to run for a second term.
      The SAK President Lauri Ihalainen's message was then that the organisation would work hard to support Halonen's re-election.
     
Criticism against the SAK surfaced in the autumn, when the parties of the centre and right got provoked. The National Coalition Party's acting Secretary of the time Anssi Kujala encouraged those supporting non-socialist values to resign from the SAK. He also offered the reminder that fewer than half of the SAK membership were actually supporters of the Social Democratic Party or the Left Alliance.
      In Tukiainen's view the SAK's gesture exceeded its intention in magnitude.
      "In retrospect, the SAK Council's decision may not have been the best one. It burdened the organisation unnecessarily. Of course it was not the SAK's responsibility to elect the President for the Republic", Tukiainen points out.
      Tukiainen reckons the SAK will avoid making similar decisions in the future.
     
The discussion of the SAK's role became heated in November, when Halonen visited the SAK Council. During the January climax of the electoral campaigning, the SAK started a vote activation campaign, which viciously attacked the National Coalition Party's candidate Sauli Niinistö.
      According to Tukiainen, the poll's result confirms that people accept the trade unions' involvement in the capacity of encouraging their members to cast a vote.
      The SAK also plans to prepare its own campaign for the parliamentary election of 2007.
      "Our goal is to activate people to cast a vote through raising questions that have bearing from the wage-earners' point of view", Tukiainen concludes.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Halonen begins second term as President (2.3.2006)
  Tarja Halonen elected to second term as President after close race (30.1.2006)

Links:
  Inauguration speech by President of the Republic of Finland Tarja Halonen, March 1st, 2006
  SAK Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions

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