By Athena Papakosta

Even the finale of the Finnish parliamentary elections has been slow to come to an end since the election result looks more like a tie for the country’s three biggest parties.

At the same time, however, we have a clear winner and that is the conservative right since it is now clear that the majority of Finns do not want the center-left policies of Sanna Marin, who meanwhile kept her popularity intact until the end of her parliamentary term . Three paradoxes together in an election contest in the northernmost country of the European Union, Finland.

The numbers of the ballot box

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has lost her battle to stay in power after Petteri Orpo’s centre-right party finished first in a three-way derby in Finland’s parliamentary election.

With a 0.9% difference from the winner and 0.2% from the second party, the Social Democrats remained in third place with 19.9%. With all votes counted, the center-right National Coalition Party received 20.8% while the populist, far-right Finns Party won 20.1% of the vote and landed in second place.

In the Finnish parliament these percentages are translated as follows:

  • 48 seats for the conservative National Coalition which increases its number of MPs by ten
  • 46 seats for the far-right which puts in the Finnish Parliament an additional seven MPs
  • and 43 seats for the Social Democrats, three more than the last election.

In Finland, 71.9% of citizens voted yesterday, a slightly lower percentage than in 2019, but all three major parties recorded higher percentages than the previous election, four years ago.

The next day in Finland dawns with Orpo being ordered to form a government. From today he should start looking for “partners” other parties in order to succeed in forming a coalition government, one more for Finland with a shift, but now, more to the right.

A bitter defeat

For Marin, it is a bitter defeat after she increased her party’s ratings while her popularity remained high until the end.

Her tenure was marked by the coronavirus pandemic that knocked on her door in her first 100 days in office. The then youngest head of government in the world (she was only 34 years old) fared much better than other European Union Member States, recording lower infection rates and achieving faster economic recovery.

Then came the war with Russia invading Ukraine. Marin managed to overturn a years-old tradition by persuading the Finns, who share 1,360 kilometers with Russia, to abandon military neutrality and apply to join NATO.

During her four-year term – now 37 – Marin also accomplished many of the goals she had set herself such as reforming social services, strengthening education, modernizing gender identity legislation based on self-determination, updating abortion legislation by strengthening women’s right to self-determination while passing the country’s carbon neutrality goal for 2035. But she became world famous for the wrong reasons: her gender, her age and her dancing with friends at a party.

What could have gone wrong?

The opposition managed to make the economy a central theme of the pre-election period. The National Coalition Party has promised austerity after the public debt swelled to 70.1% following the strengthening of the country’s defense due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For her part, Marin stood in favor of the Welfare State and turned her gaze to taxation without being able to convince that she would finally bring some order to the country’s finances, which Finns have always wanted in order despite the constant problem of an aging population that increases weights.

The next day

They called her the wonder girl of the millennial generation. Sana Marin led a historic coalition government in which all participating parties had female presidents. He managed to break the mold of steely political behavior by talking about the need for more politicians who will be human by daring to show emotion by being themselves. “We represent ordinary people. Why can’t we also be… simple?’

Petri Orpo is 53 years old and has a different philosophy. The official opposition leader and head of the National Coalition Party has served as the country’s finance minister. As of today, he is now the next prime minister of Finland, as long as he first finds an ally to the right of him, in the person of far-right Riika Pura, who, while in favor of austerity, mainly aims to impose a hard line against immigration. An old and tried recipe for the country that remained this year in first place in the world ranking with the happiest residents in the world.