Finland clearly bet on the vote to the rightthe moderate and the radical, and left Social Democrat Sanna Marin relegated to third place. The leader of the National Alliance or “Kokoomus”, the conservative Petteri Orpowas erected in the winner of the legislative elections, with 20.6%, with 95% of the votes counted. The far-right True Finns from Riikka Purra got the second place, with 20.2%three tenths above the party of the current prime minister, who governed at the head of a center-left coalition of five parties.
“Our goal is to build a strong coalition. The country needs a change and the economy, together with the NATO integration, is our priority & rdquor ;, said Orpo, in an appearance before the foreign media, when his victory seemed consolidated, although not with whom he will share power. “We, the moderate conservatives, have been asking for integration into the Alliance for decades,” the leader of “Kokoomus” also recalled, alluding to the fact that the turn of the Social Democrat in the direction of NATO has resulted from the Russian aggression on Ukraine.
Marin, for his part, congratulated the moderate right, although he kept open the option of becoming their ally, from the status of junior partner.
TO Riikka Purra, which the first projections still placed in third position, behind Marin, had been seen in a previous appearance before the media nervous, insecure or even disappointed. When the projections went to the scrutinized vote, and to her promotion, things changed.
He presented himself claiming that his success is due to the fact that his party does know how to connect with the citizen concerns. And that they are oriented towards the security and the fight against crime organized. True Finns is a eurosceptic and anti-immigration partywhose message in these elections was that containing public spending – skyrocketing, under Marin’s management, partly due to the pandemic – involves cutting items for culture and containing irregular immigration.
While Orpo announced, in the absence of definitive results, his intention to open negotiations of coalition “with all the parties& rdquor; -which in the current situation of fragmentation means a very wide arc- Marin took refuge in caution before giving up. She purrs as she presented herself as a winner, from her position as a rookie on the Finnish political scene and a boommaker for her party.
The condition of virtual member in the Alliance is, for the True Finns, in second position, after what is really relevant, in their opinion, which is the internal security of the country.
“NATO membership can be a shield against external danger. We will see. But our citizens also want to shield themselves against the dangers that we already have inside, because others let them in & rdquor ;, Teija Makkonen, candidate of the True Finns in Helsinki, argued before this envoy, after her last campaign event, on the night of Saturday. The radicals had stayed in a central square in the heart of the capital, when the rest of the parties had already withdrawn from that same place, which is strictly legal in Finland, since there is no day of reflection.
Makkonen shares a list in that district of Helsinki with Jussi Halla-aho, who led the party in the 2019 elections, where he came close to drawing against the Social Democrats, then led by Antti Rinne. Purra, his successor, was instead the head of the list of Uusimaa, the province that surrounds Helsinki and that includes the great ball of voters from his belt and neighboring towns: 1.4 million citizens with the right to vote, out of a total of 4 .5 million from the country. It integrates cities such as Porvoo, a town of single-family wooden houses characteristic of that Nordic country, but it also contains the swarm of the so-called Finland of the future, on the outskirts of Helsinki. Nuclei like Kivenlahi or Koivusaari, made up of blocks of aseptically white houses and some imposing skyscrapers, on the shores of beautiful fjords, created to house the population that Helsinki can no longer absorb.
Security, not only with respect to Russia, but also against organized crime is one of the great Finnish concerns. Both in Helsinki and its feverish night life -especially on weekends- and in these impeccably built and well-connected residential areas, but where there is hardly any life on the street as soon as night falls. Purra and his party base their campaign on the need to tame organized crime – which they identify with foreign clans – and to cut off access to irregular immigration to the welfare society.
The strength of the Nordic far-right lies in this double message, at a time when Marin’s public debt skyrocketed with the pandemic. Autochthonous criminality and the scourge of foreign clans is a real problem, not only for Finland, but for the Nordic countries as a whole, which comes in handy for the xenophobic speech of the Purra party.
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Something similar was already seen in the Swedish legislatures of 2022, where the far-right Swedish Democrats came in second place behind the social democrat Magdalena Andersson. The result of these elections meant goodbye to power for the center-left bloc of the then Swedish prime minister; the third in the polls, the conservative Ulf Kristersson, became head of government at the head of a centrist coalition, with the radicals as an external ally.
The extreme fragmentation of the vote or the shrinking of the traditional parties is the lever for European right-wing radicalism. When none of the so-called big parties reaches 20%, as happened in Finland four years ago, these formations end up normalizing their political landscape, becoming allies of the center-right or setting the government’s agenda from outside, as is the case in Stockholm.