Tarja Halonen will continue as President of the Republic until 2012 but the presidential election was a close-run race. The success of the National Coalition Party brings a new dynamism to domestic politics, writes Kyösti Karvonen, Managing Editor of the newspaper Kaleva.
In the second and final round of the Finnish presidential election on January 29, voters had two clear choices: continuity or change. A small but clear majority of voters chose continuity, putting the incumbent, Tarja Halonen, back in office for another six years.
The option of change, particularly in the realm of security policy, was represented by Halonen’s opponent Sauli Niinistö, the candidate of the National Coalition Party, a moderate conservative party. Taking into account Halonen’s popularity ratings, which had stayed at an unusually high level for an unusually long time, and also her advantage of being the incumbent in the election campaign, Niinistö came surprisingly close to Halonen in the decisive vote.
The election result can be seen as a sign that there will be no major changes in Finland’s foreign and security policy, at least not in the very near future. In her campaign, Halonen made it clear that she does not see any immediate reason for Finland to join NATO. Surprisingly enough, Niinistö said more and more openly towards the end of his election campaign that if the ‘Europeanization’ of NATO continues, he would seriously consider whether Finland should join the alliance in the next few years.
In the final analysis, one might say the issue of NATO membership was the watershed in the presidential contest. After the election, there was some speculation about whether Niinistö would have stood a better chance of winning if he had taken a more cautious approach to NATO membership. On the other hand, it can also be said that Niinistö nearly won despite his rather daring stance on NATO. NATO membership has received little support in opinion polls in Finland.
Semi-victory for the National Coalition Party
Although victory is always victory and defeat is always defeat, it is nevertheless Halonen’s party, the Finnish Social Democratic Party, that has been more worried than the National Coalition Party about the election result and the political perspectives it opens up. Despite Niinistö’s defeat, the result was 'a semi-victory' for his party. It has not had nearly as much success in a presidential election for decades.
For the Centre Party, currently the biggest party in Parliament and in the Government, the presidential election was a major disappointment. Indeed the election result has given rise to deep and possibly lengthy turmoil within the party. The Centre Party's presidential candidate, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, announced immediately after the first round of the election that he would stand for the chairmanship (i.e.leadership) of the Centre at the party congress this coming summer. This was an attempt to stem a rapidly rising tide of criticism. The party secretary, Eero Lankia, announced that he would resign. Vanhanen has now lost two consecutive elections, and a third defeat in the parliamentary elections in March 2007 would make his position as leader of the party untenable.
If the political situation brought about by the presidential election becomes more permanent, the traditional power structures in Finland’s domestic politics may be put to the test. Finland has three major political parties, and since no single party ever wins an absolute majority in parliamentary elections none can be in Government alone, but only together with one of the other two. It thus follows that the third party takes a turn at being in opposition.
This power triangle of domestic politics is usually dominated by the party that is the most successful in parliamentary elections. This 'winning' party almost always chooses one of the other two big parties to sit in Government with it. The position of biggest party has usually — although not at present — been held by the Social Democratic Party. That position of power gives it a good chance to divide the front made up of the biggest non-socialist parties, i.e. the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party.
The leaders of the National Coalition Party, buoyant with their good results in the presidential election, have already suggested that the assignment of forming the Government should perhaps not go automatically to the party that wins the biggest number of seats in the Parliamentary elections of March 2007.
The Social Democratic Party responded in kind, wondering aloud whether the National Coalition Party and the Centre Party might have a secret agreement concerning a future non-socialist government. Even a hint of secret agreements leaves a bad bad taste in Finnish domestic politics, stemming from the occcasion before the parliamentary elections of 1987 when the non-socialist parties secretly agreed on the kind of Government they would form after the elections. In the end, the plan came to nothing.
Cooperation worked better
One new feature of this year's presidential election was that the National Coalition Party and the Centre Party were able to cooperate better in the second round of the election than perhaps ever before. The chairmen of both parties had already announced a year ago that if there were to be a second round of voting in the presidential election, they would then vote for whichever non-socialist candidate reached the second round.
In Finnish presidential elections, the focus is typically on personalities and it is very difficult to convince voters to vote for a specific candidate along party lines. Finnish voters are far less faithful to their political parties in presidential elections than in other elections. Despite this, voting recommendations made by leading party figures do carry some weight.
Six years ago, in the second round of the presidential election, cooperation between the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party was unsuccessful. Back then, Sauli Niinistö announced - after the election - that he had voted for the losing Centre Party candidate, Esko Aho.
The good outcome of the election immediately triggered speculation that Niinistö, who is currently one of the vice-chairmen of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in Luxembourg, might return to domestic politics, possibly standing as the National Coalition Party's candidate for the post of Prime Minister after the parliamentary elections in 2007. Niinistö himself immediately rejected such a notion with a tone of finality.
Unsatisfying victory
Six years ago, President Halonen defeated her rival candidate, the Centre Party's Esko Aho, by an even narrower margin than the one between her and Niinistö this year, which was 51.6% to 48.4%. Although the results for the second round were almost the same this time as in 2000, the elections themselves were notably different in character.
In 2000, Halonen had an eminently successful election campaign, whereas this time around, the campaign was rather a struggle. Her strategists had lulled themselves into believing that she would win easily in the first round.
When this did not happen, the campaign had to be more or less restarted. At this point, the Social Democratic Party brought all their resources into play. The largest trade union federation in Finland, the SAK, which had already declared support for Halonen last spring in an unprecedented union decision, started campaigning forcefully against Niinistö after the first round. Paavo Lipponen, Speaker of Parliament, former chairman of the Social Democratic Party, and former Prime Minister, criticised Niinistö’s stance on NATO membership. Coming from Lipponen, this was somewhat surprising, as he had generally been regarded as leaning towards NATO himself during his time as Premier.
A third difference between the elections of 2000 and 2006 was that this time the candidates were engaged in a much more even competition for votes from Finland’s major urban constituencies than Halonen and Aho had been in 2000. This was due to the fact that support for the National Coalition Party is much higher in towns than in rural areas. On the other hand, Halonen gathered much more support from outside the major towns than she had in 2000.
In the second round, President Halonen won 51.8 per cent of the votes against Niinistö’s 48.2 per cent. Numerically the margin was thus about 112,000 votes. Despite being the incumbent, Halonen only gained 0.2 percentage points more votes than she had six years earlier. Previous Finnish Presidents from the Social Democratic Party, Mauno Koivisto and Martti Ahtisaari, were elected with bigger majorities than Halonen. Neither of them chose to publicly endorse Halonen before this year's election. Meanwhile, Esko Aho, former leader of the Centre Party, announced before the second round that he would vote for Niinistö. Ahtisaari says openly that Finland ought to join NATO.
Before the second round, Eero Heinäluoma, chairman of the Social Democratic Party and Minister of Finance, implied that Halonen was about to be endorsed by somebody outside her circle of well-known supporters. The fingers were pointed towards either Ahtisaari or former Prime Minister, Anneli Jäätteenmäki, of the Centre Party. The latter, however, said she would vote for Niinistö. In the end, the scoop promised by Heinäluoma failed to materialize.
Advance voting tipped the balance
Halonen won the race as early as the advance voting stage. Voting ahead of the fixed polling days is a normal procedure in Finnish political elections. This time about 800,000 women and 600,000 men chose to cast their votes in advance. Halonen received some 113,000 more advance votes than Niinistö. It is easy to assume that women decided the victory for Halonen in this way. The same thing happened six years ago.
In contrast, Niinistö received a very narrow majority of votes cast on the actual election day. Opinion polls conducted just before the second round showed an exceptionally high number of undecided voters right up to voting time.
Halonen received a majority of votes in 13 of Finland's 15 constituencies, including the most populous ones, Helsinki and the province of Uusimaa that surrounds the Helsinki metropolitan area. Niinistö’s defeat may have been sealed by the fact that voting turnout dropped in the second round compared with the first in areas that are traditionally Centre Party strongholds. Apparently, many Centre Party voters chose to stay at home and not vote for anyone.
In her second six-year term of office, Halonen will be able to raise her profile more than in her first. However, the President’s powers are restricted mainly to foreign and security policy, while presidential authority in domestic politics is much more limited than it used to be. President Halonen herself interpreted the election results as an indication that the people of Finland expect their President to take a more prominent part in, above all, the debate on values.
Kyösti Karvonen
