Finnish parliamentary election a slight disappointment

Photo by Daniel Mohr

Finland had the parliamentary election a week ago and it have been all over the news. I don’t mean just national papers, but also abroad. The third biggest party is now the True Finns and even I am truly a Finnish person, I can’t agree with some of the party’s values.

I believe in multicultural and tolerant Finland. From what I have read True Finns  are too conservative and narrow-minded for me. They want strict limits on humanitarian immigration and object gender-neutral marriage. Last Monday, just after counting the votes, my Facebook News Feed was full of status updates from my friends who also weren’t too happy with the results.

My friend living in Malta wrote that things still aren’t as bad as in Malta where they are still negotiating should divorce be made legal or not. And I continued, that it sure is much better than in China where the only choice is the Communist Party.

Sure there are benefits of having just a one party to rule. It’s fast and easy to make decisions when no one is objecting. Finnish people are sometimes complaining about our parliamentarians, because they just talk and nothing happens. But the downside of having just one party, one opinion, is that things  can also go terribly wrong very fast.

I do believe that nothing too damaging is going to happen in Finland for the next four years. True Finns got a huge victory in the election, but they are not alone in the parliament. It does feel like a step in the wrong direction, but right now it is too early to say what will eventually happen.

I must add that I don’t follow politics too closely. There is a lot that I don’t know and therefore I’m not the best person to introduce Finnish governance and politics to you. But this post is an opinion of an ordinary Finnish person, opinion that many of my friends share.

Finnish people living abroad are able to vote at Finland’s embassies and consulates around the world. I also did my civic duty earlier this month, but unfortunately my candidate didn’t get enough votes. I hope he will try again in the next election four years later.

But before that there is presidential election next year.