Finnish politics

I never thought I'd be starting a thread on Finnish politics here because who cares about Finland? I know I often bring up stuff about Finland but I've always kind of assumed that it's not really very interesting.

After mentioning on the Arab Spring thread the fact that I'm campaigning to get a friend of mine elected into Parliament, I got this message:

Well, everyone who's seen many of my posts knows that I love to talk about my country, so sure, if someone will read it, I'll start a thread!

I'll start by multi-posting a bit because I don't think anyone wants to see a thread start with a mega-post, plus it's more convenient to have the intro in one post and the info on another.

edited 7th Apr '11 7:36:00 AM by BestOf

As the inspiration for this thread, can you share some of the background? Which friend is it your campaigning for, what is your role, on what platform is he running, where is the facebook page? And very much thanks for this, as I know you're busy!

So, I'll start by explaining the basics of how Finnish elections work.

Parliamentary elections in Finland are held every 4 years. The next elections are about a week from now.

In Finnish elections, it's possible to vote in advance about a week before the actual election day. Most people still vote on the election day, but voting in advance has the benefit of not having to stand in line, plus there's more time to do it and you can vote even if you're busy on the election day. Also, if you vote on the election day, you have to vote in a specific place, whereas if you vote in advance you get to choose from many places. The polls opened yesterday and it's possible to vote in advance until Tuesday. The election day is Sunday next week.

In addition to Parliamentary elections, we have Municipal Elections, Presidential elections and also elections for our representatives in the European Parliament. Parliamentary and Municipal elections take place every 4 years, European elections every 5 years, and Presidential elections every 6 years. The previous parliamentary elections were in 2007, Presidential in 2006, Municipal in 2008 and European in 2009.

In European and Presidential elections, the entire country serves as one electoral district, whereas in Parliamental elections, there are 15 districts, each of which gets a number of representatives that depends on population and in Municipal elections, each city or town is its own district.

The Finnish Parliament has 200 seats. We use the D'Hond Method. In it, the votes of all candidates in a list (usually, each party has a list, but in election alliances, two parties are combined into a single list) are combined into an aggregate total number of proportional votes. The candidate with most votes in a list gets the total number of aggregate proportional votes, the candidate with the second most votes gets half of it, the third person on the list gets a third, and so on. When proportional votes for every candidate are counted, the candidates with most proportional votes get elected. So if Party A has 10 candidates, one with 1 001 votes and all the others with 1 000, the first guy gets 10 001 proportional votes and the second person gets 5 000. If Part B has 10 candidates and one of them gets 9 000 votes and the others get just one, the total is 9 009, so the guy with 9 000 votes didn't pass if there's only one seat available.

The same system is in use in Municipal and European elections. Presidential elections do not use this system, so they're direct elections.

Next up: Finnish political parties.

edited 7th Apr '11 8:03:22 AM by BestOf

In Finland, parties that have seats in the Parliament are often called "major parties" and the term "minor parties" is used to refer to parties that have no seats.

The minor parties include the Pirate Party (which wants to get rid of copyright laws and has no other items in it platform), the Change 2011 party (which has a platform of "let's choose everything by direct elections - other than that, our party has no political positions"), the Independence Party (which has a platform of "let's not allow any more immigrants, let's stop giving foreign aid, and let's split up from the EU") and 3 Communist parties. All of these parties are totally insignificant, and if even one of them manages to get even a single seat, I'll eat my hat or something.

The major parties are:

Right-wing:

Kokoomus (National Coalition Party) - fiscal conservative, don't care about the poor or students, sometimes behave like caricatures of rich people (for example, they distribute leaflets from house to house by Taxi instead of walking).

Kristillisdemokraatit (Christian Democrats) - not supposed to be right-wing but in reality is, very conservative (which in Finland means that only about 30% of the party supports gay marriage, stuff like that).

Suomen Ruotsalainen Kansanpuolue (Swedish People's Party) - fiscal conservative, even more like caricatures than Kokoomus (most millionaires in Finland are descendants of nobility and other Swedish-speaking families that made their fortune when Finland was part of Sweden). The RKP will always be in every government because they're willing to vote for anything as long as they're accepted into the government coalition. The only thing they ask in return is that no one in government tries to remove mandatory Swedish from Finnish schools.

Centre:

Keskusta (literally "Centre"). Used to be the Agrarian Union, but changed their name when most of the population moved from agrarian to urban life. It's socially Left and fiscally Right, though they'll turn their coats faster than anyone can keep track. They're the most consistently popular party in Finland despite being the one with most criminals and corruption; for example, in the last decade, 2 Prime Ministers from this party have had to resign because they got caught in corruption or fraud.

Vihreä Liitto (Green Union) - fiscally Right-wing with some exceptions (like supporting universal welfare), socially Left, mostly about environmental things. Unpopular at the moment because they left a government coalition led by the SDP when it was decided that Finland would build a 3rd nuclear reactor, but didn't do the same last year when a Kokoomus-led government decided to build a 4th reactor.

Left:

SDP. Shifted to the right through the 90's and early 00's but is moving back to the Left now that they were out of Government for a while. Our 3 previous Presidents (including the current one) have been from this party, and since the early 90's, they were the largest party until 2003, when they lost to Keskusta because the leader of Keskusta lied about the head of the SDP having agreed to send troops to Iraq in discussions with Bush (which didn't happen in reality). The SDP was still in government, but no longer the largest party. In 2007, they were kicked out when Kokoomus and Keskusta beat them.

Vasemmistoliitto (Left Alliance). A party formed when several Leftist parties merged in 1990. Used to be the 4th-largest party in Finland until Perussuomalaiset beat them in popularity. The most Leftist party with seats in Parliament and the party that I'm a member of. These days, we're more Green than the Green League, but we're still mostly about creating a society where no one's poor and where as many as possible have a job. We're not Socialist in the sense of trying to turn Finland into a Marxist, Leninist or other Communist society. We're what's called "modern European Left".

Perussuomalaiset ("True Finns", though the prefix "perus-" has many meanings, such as "basic" and "average", so it's less about being a "true" Finn and more to do with "your average Finnish working man"). It's considered right-wing in Finland because of its anti-immigration and anti-gay positions, though its other social and fiscal policies are pretty much copied from the SDP, as many of the party's supporters are people who defected from the SDP when it started to move Right. In European press, it's always been listed as Left, and I think that's correct. This party was almost totally insignificant until 2007, when people started talking about them when they raised their amount of seats from 3 to 5 despite some radical positions that they've later abandoned. This party has recently grown very rapidly, and in these elections it's expected to beat the Greens, the Left Alliance, the Christians, the Swedes and possibly the SDP to become the third-largest party. In reality, a large chunk of their supporters will probably not vote, so I don't think they'll beat the SDP.

Traditionally, we've had a government formed by a coalition of two out of the "big three" (SDP, Keskusta, Kokoomus) and enough minor parties to form a majority. Starting from these elections, we'll have a "big four" now that Perussuomalaiset has grown so fast.

I'll post more later but now I've gotta get ready for sauna!

Thanks Best, for all of that. Could you tell us a little about the specific individual you are helping campaign for?

The guy I'm campaigning for is Antti Saarelainen. We've been friends since 7th grade (2002 or so), and both of us were into politics and firmly in the Left already back then. His platform is mostly based on that of the party (the Left Alliance), with some things we added that weren't in the party's plans. As you'll notice if you click the link, the site is only in Finnish, so it's not much use for you.

I'll translate the 12 items (which we wrote together, so about a half of these were added by me) on the list. Each item is followed by a brief explanation. Note that the Finnish language is able to convey massive amounts of information in composite words and by including post- and prepositions in the words, so the translations seem really long though the original sentences are short.) The stuff in brackets is translator's notes.

1. Education has to remain free.

Free, universal education is one of the founding pillars of an equal society.

2. (Having trouble translating "kouluviihtyisyys" ... "koulu" = school, "viihtyisyys" = the degree to which something is enjoyable. Got that? So...) Schools are made more enjoyable and school shootings avoided with reasonably sized (as opposed to too big) groups and community, not with metal detectors and massive high schools. (The metal detector bit there is provocation - no one has really suggested anything like that here, and most Finns wouldn't believe it if someone told them there really are schools with metal detectors in other countries.)

Councillors and school nurses on all levels of education should be easier to approach than pistols. (Simplified this a bit.)

3. Mental health services should not have queues.

Society's resources and, more importantly, human lives would be spared if mental health care was available easily and without a threshold (meaning that mental healthcare should be improved so that people wouldn't hesitate to apply for help).

4. The public sector should strive to use open source programs.

Tax money shouldn't go into any corporation's monopoly. (Abandoning Windows and using Linux in public offices is a pretty popular goal in Finland because Linux is a Finnish product.)

5. Internet censorship does not decrease child pornography, internet threats (one of our Ministers recently got death threads in her official e-mail) or other side-effects of the Internet.

These problems are not solvable with limits to freedom of expression. Instead, they could be solved with co-operation between agencies (mainly referring to different branches of police). The right to anonymous expression of opinions should be guaranteed as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others.

6. Capital gain should be treated and taxed like wages.

Taxes on capital gains should be progressive. We must remain true to the principle of progressive taxation. Large capital gains under a flat tax rate enable tax evasion in practise.

7. State-owned corporations should not be privatised. Instead, state ownership in key industries should be increased.

The production of key services (mainly post, transport, police, etc) should be managed democratically and funded with taxes. We must not allow a situation to form in which the state only produces services that don't generate income and everything else is produced privately.

8. Nuclear power is not a solution to global warming.

Nuclear power, like other non-renewable energy sources, is not compatible with sustainable development. Nuclear waste is the worst kind of waste from energy production.

9. We must not decrease our refugee quota.

As a developed country, Finland should do its part in the effort to guarantee human rights globally.

10. Finland must remain militarily neutral.

Neutrality has been one of Finland's main diplomatic assets for decades, and geo-political circumstances haven't changed in a way that would necessitate joining an alliance.

11. We must guarantee the right to industrial action (strikes, stuff like that).

The right to strike should not be sacrificed to the growth of the economy. We must keep in mind that a worker is a person and thus more important than economic growth.

12. Society must guarantee each individual a sufficient livelihood.

Society must guarantee a sufficient quality of life for those who cannot support themselves.

I'll write more on the upcoming elections later.

Seems like the sort of party that has my vote.

I'd vote for everything bar the nuclear idea. I know we have to consider the longer term, but Nuclear power is important for any midterm growth in the energy sector.

At least it is in Britain, in Finland you guys may have geothermal sources that provide better renewable energy.

I wonder how long it will take before someone comes in and call us dirty hippie communists?

edited 7th Apr '11 12:04:13 PM by Kayeka

We don't have geothermal, but here's a post that explains why our party doesn't want to build more nuclear.

Ah, now over here we have a lack of energy.

No, no it's not.

The waste generated by nuclear power plants can be wholly collected and contained so in a sense it seems to me to be a "better" kind of waste, at least in principle.

We should've used the treaties Finland has signed to produce a certain percentage of our total energy production with renewable sources in the list instead. There's no way to meet the goals we've set and not lose money if we go nuclear, because the more nuclear power we produce, the more renewable power sources we have to use to make up for the increase in total production and keep renewables at a certain percentile.

The hot issues in this election are the following:

• European bailout. We've sent €600 million to Greece and promised to guarantee €8 billion worth of their loans (fortunately, we might not have to actually guarantee anything - they'd have to take the loan and ask us first, but if they do, we gotta do it). We've also promised to send money to Ireland, and now it seems that we might have to help Portugal, too. These bailouts are not accepted by the majority of Finns, but all of the parties in the current government (Kokoomus, the Centre, the Swedes and the Greens - check the earlier post about Finnish parties) support these bailouts 'cause they were the ones that pushed them through. The opposition parties do not want to put any more Finnish money into European bailout packages 'cause the money should've been taken from the banks (mainly British, German and French ones) that caused the Greek, Irish and Portuguese crisis in the first place, so from our point of view, we're just giving free money to European banks without any guarantee that we'll ever get any of it back. The Left Alliance also opposes these bailouts.

• Finnish economy. The Ministry of Finance has calculated that we need to cut our deficit by a total of €10 billion in the next 10 years, though this sum is probably inflated by the right-wing parties 'cause they want to cut social services to fund the tax cuts they've been giving to the wealthy and big corporations. Every party is currently being demanded to tell where they would get this money. Some of the most popular suggestions are cuts to defence spending, removing some tax benefits from huge corporations and millionaires, no more bailouts, raising the degree to which taxation in progressive (i.e. taxing the poor less and the rich more) and rebuilding our social and other services to be more cost-effective. All of these are supported by our party.

• The welfare state. People are worried about the declining quality of national healthcare service and railways, among other services, that has resulted from the cuts to their funding that the Right (sometimes with the support of the SDP, which is why the party is seen as a bunch of traitors by many former supporters, especially the ones who've gone to Perussuomalaiset) has pushed through in the last 2 decades. Our party has suggestions for these problems (mainly to do with reducing bureaucracy and ceasing to outsource these services, because most of the failures are due to outsourcing), and also funding these services better so that infrastructures can be improved at short-term expense to avert long-term costs. We also have a plan to replace most of our current welfare benefits (student support, small pensions, social security, etc) with a basic income guarantee of €750 per month. This means that every Finnish citizen above the age of 18 gets €750 per month from the state. This would replace a huge chunk of government bureaucracy and raise the standard of living for most lower middle class Finns and cause a huge boost to the economy as consumption grows. We've had this checked by a whole lot of economists, and the net total of replacing current systems with such a default benefit would be huge savings for the state.

• Taxation in general is also an issue that has been discussed at length in this election. It's mostly about whether or not we would gain more jobs and wealth from tax benefits to huge corporations (Kokoomus, Centre, Swedes) or from increasing total consumption and supporting small and medium-sized corporations with tax and other benefits (Left Alliance, SDP, Greens, Perussuomalaiset).

• Gay rights. More specifically, their right to marry (instead of registered partnership, which is 90% equal to marriage from a legal point of view) and adopt. The SDP, Kokoomus, the Left, Greens and the Swedes support "gender-neutral marriage", which has come to be the term used most often. The Christians and Perussuomalaiset are the main parties opposed to this, so it's likely that the next government will pass a law that mandates churches receiving state benefits to carry out gay marriages. The issue of gay marriage was discussed in a panel that the National Broadcasting Corporation ran, which included various kinds of religious, political and other figures debating the issue of gay marriage. After the program, some 24 000 people resigned their membership of the Lutheran church (mostly because of comments made by the head of the Christian Democrats in the program), which is huge considering that in an average year, some 40 000 people resign from the church.

• The separation of church and state, which is an issue that has arisen from the "gay debate". The Russian/Greek Orthodox and Lutheran churches are the only religious institutions in Finland that have the right to tax their members. The Left Alliance and some other parties want to stop giving this benefit to any churches because Finland is supposed to be a secular state.

• Immigration. Certain parties, such as the Independence Party, Change 2011 and, most notably, Perussuomalaiset have gained popularity from their anti-immigration stance. They don't want to accept any more immigrants, even refugees, into Finland unless the immigrants have a job here or are very highly educated. Many parties are tagging along with this, though the Left and the Greens have held firm in our demand that we raise or at least don't decrease our refugee quota and that we should let people immigrate as long as they do it legally. There are loopholes in Finnish immigration policy that should be closed; every party is agreed on this. But only the Greens and the Left would like to not tighten the regulations any more than is necessary to close these loopholes.

edited 21st Jan '14 6:12:04 AM by BestOf

That's different. You've got stupid contracts, that's not a reason to use bad reasoning.

Care to elaborate?

Is a bad argument as coal waste is worse on any particular way of measurement, including radioactivity, and is generally less of a problem than others and thus is bad reasoning

"We have treaty obligations" is a perfectly valid reasoning, even if the treaties themselves are bad ideas, which this one was as it fences in what you're allowed to do and results in something being artificially expensive.

I think he means that your stance on Nuclear Power makes sense, although not the reasoning for it given in the points.

Also, your pal wouldn't stand a chance in American Politics without a haircut! :P

Then American politics has terrible hair-sense.

Not gonna argue with that, though I must've picked up something from them because I now realize I'd need good justification to vote for a long hair.

Though your friend has most of the justification in the important departments.

@Best Of:

If I understand you correctly, the "Regular Finns Party" used to be a left-wing schism from the SDP. How did they become socially right-wing?

Because it's a political party, would be my guess.

When the environemnt favors right-wingers, eventually the system shifts right, until that causes a counter-reaction and the whole thing swings left again.

The Republicans were once the liberals and the Democrats the conservatives. Your social stance shifts depending on where your major political issue stances sit in regards to the social ideals of your base.

A left-wing schism of the Social-Democrats doesn't typically go socially conservative *in a decade*. Something very weird happened there.