Petteri Orpo, leader of the centre-right National Coalition (Kokoomus), has claimed victory in the general election in Finland.
The elections in Finland between the social democratic party of the outgoing premier Sanna Marin and the conservatives of the National Coalition are a challenge to the last vote, a challenge in which Riikka Purra’s ultra-right is also fully entering, growing to the highest level in its history. On the basis of evening projections, out of two thirds of the voters in the elections for the renewal of the Eduskunta, the single-chamber Finnish parliament is still playing against the centre-right National Coalition (Kokoomus) led by Petteri Orpo, ahead of the national-populist party and Eurosceptic of the ‘True Finns’.
Finland to vote, polling stations open in Helsinki
The popularity of the young prime minister was not enough for Marin’s SDP. The photo a few hours after the polls closed suggests a tortuous negotiation for the formation of the coalition that will support the government, considering the various vetoes expressed by some forces during the electoral campaign. Traditionally in Finland, at the outcome of the elections, with a proportional system and seats assigned for constituencies based on the population, the party with the most votes tries to form the government coalition and has indicated the prime minister since the 1990s. For the majority, 101 deputies are needed out of the 200 in parliament. Both the social democrats of Marin and the centre-right of Orpo are up sharply compared to 2019, in a vote that divided the country between for and against cuts in welfare or austerity measures to reduce debt, in a context of skyrocketing inflation and fears of recession. All the parties of the coalition that supports the young prime minister lost votes on this polarization, with a debacle of the Greens and only the Center holding above expectations (12.5%), which will be decisive in the formation of a coalition in which even a MP makes a difference. In 2019, the SPD took the lead by just one seat over Purra (with 17.7% versus 17.5% for the True Finns). The vote in Finland comes just a few days after the last go-ahead for the historic accession to NATO, with ratification in Turkey arriving on Thursday, but the issue is so shared that it has remained out of the debate. The 37-year-old Marin, well known abroad, very popular at home, also thanks to exemplary management of the pandemic, has moved the Social Democrats to the left in the electoral campaign, focusing on welfare and above all on education which she believes is capable of bringing the wealth of the country, instead attributing the increase in public debt only to the pandemic and crisis in Ukraine and saying she is against any spending cuts. The Orpo Coalition instead calls for austerity measures for 6 billion euros, to bring the public debt back to the virtuous values of the EU. The Real Finns instead express openly anti-migrant and Eurosceptic positions, starting with the request not to respect the commitment for climate neutrality in 2035, without denying the old long-term goal of ‘Fixit’, the exit of Finland from the European Union.
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