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Illustration: Sreejith R. Kumar
Finland is all set to get a new Prime Minister. In the elections held on April 2, the centre-right National Coalition Party (NCP) came out on top with a 20.8% vote share and 48 of the 200 parliamentary seats. The far-right anti-immigration Finns Party came second with 20.1% of the vote and 46 seats, while the incumbent Social Democrats, led by Prime Minister Sanna Marin, finished third with 19.9% of the vote and 43 seats.
Finland has a political tradition whereby the largest party gets the first chance to form the government. With the NCP emerging as the largest, it will, under the leadership of Petteri Orpo, 53, attempt to from a coalition government. If Mr. Orpo succeeds, he could be Finland’s next Prime Minister.
The elections were dominated by debates over the economy. Mr. Orpo led a powerful campaign against the left-leaning Ms. Marin’s social democratic policies. With the Finnish economy yet to recover from the shocks administered by the pandemic, Ms. Marin sought to invest in employment creation by raising taxes on the affluent. But Mr. Orpo, a self-styled fiscal conservative, played on Finnish fears about rising public debt, which had spiked to 70% of the GDP since Ms. Marin became Prime Minister in 2019. He campaigned on a plank of reducing government debt through spending cuts and reviving the economy with lower income tax rates.
Given these sharply contrasting approaches to economic policy, a coalition between the NCP and the Social Democrats looks unlikely. Mr. Orpo, as the lead negotiator, is expected to first hold talks with the Finns Party. But here too, he would need to manage the sharp differences between the two parties on immigration. While the NCP favours immigration to address labour shortages, the Finns Party wants tighter borders.
Relatively low profile compared to the more flamboyant Ms. Marin, Mr. Orpo hails from a political family, with his father too being a member of the NCP. A post-graduate in political science, he has built a steady career in public life, serving out stints as Minister of the Interior, Finance Minister, and Deputy PM under other, more popular leaders. Known as a backroom consensus-builder, he led a revolt in May 2016 to unseat the then NCP chair and Finance Minister Alexander Stubb and succeeded, replacing him as Finance Minister in June 2016. Under his leadership, the NCP has consistently led in poll ratings since mid-2021.
Ailing economy
While the ailing economy — which has also suffered from diminished exports to Russia — has been a major factor in the Social Democrats’ dip in popularity, Mr. Orpo also built a narrative about Ms. Marin’s seeming lack of seriousness. Leaked videos of Ms. Marin dancing exuberantly at a private party made their way into social media and became fodder for the Opposition. Mr. Orpo, in contrast, presented himself as a workaday politician who knew what to do to bring the Finnish economy back on track.
On foreign policy, Mr. Orpo has announced there will be no change: Finland, as the latest European nation to join NATO, will continue to strongly support Ukraine and oppose Russia in the ongoing war.
It’s evident that enough voters have bought Mr. Orpo’s line that Ms. Marin’s spending on pensions and education was unwise at a time when rising energy costs were straining public finances. But Finland has dallied with austerity before. Attempts by Prime Minister Juha Sipila, who helmed a centre-right coalition from 2015 to 2019, to revive the economy by lowering Finnish wage costs and cutting the education Budget proved a disaster. But Finns seem to have forgotten recent history.
With tectonic changes such as the war in the neighbourhood, accession to NATO, and the economy in doldrums, it is perhaps not unexpected that the Finns, too, like electorates elsewhere, have turned to a rightwing nationalist leader. If Mr. Orpo forms a government with the Finns Party, it would mark a decisive rightward shift in Finnish politics. At the same time, Ms. Marin’s loss is a blow to the European Left, which will need to introspect on the failure of its most charismatic politician to communicate effectively with voters.
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