Yearbook 2006
Finland. According to
CountryAAH, President Tarja Halonen was re-elected in
January for a new term in office. However, she failed to
secure the victory in the first round and the election went
to a second round. There, former Social Democrat Halonen was
pitted against Conservative Socialist Party candidate Sauli
Niinistö. According to opinion polls, Halonen would win big
over Niinistö, but he managed to mobilize the bourgeois
voters surprisingly well. Halonen therefore won a tight
victory with 51.8% of the vote against Niinistö's 48.2%. On
the left, the criticism was harsh on the Social Democratic
campaign that was considered unsuccessful. Halonen won
despite the S campaign, it was called by the Left League
leader Suvi-Anne Siimes. At the same time, an internal
battle was going on within the Left League, where Suvi-Anne
Siimes pulled the shortest straw and was forced to resign in
March. She was referred to as a innovator.
 The victory in the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens in
May for the so-called monster group Lordi triggered unusual
cheer scenes in Finland. When Lordi arrived in Helsinki
after his success with "Hard Rock Hallelujah", close to
100,000 Finns gathered at the Market Square for the
acclaimed tributes to the rock musicians, who had received
harsh criticism for their challenging style before the
competition.
At the turn of the year, Finland took over the EU
Presidency and was forced, among other things, to deal with
the EU's problematic relationship with Russia. At the
informal EU summit in Lahti in October, President Vladimir
Putin was invited. In connection with the meeting, President
Halonen appealed to Putin to avoid the bloodshed in the
ongoing Russian-Georgian conflict. The meeting was held
shortly after the assassination of regime-critical Russian
journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow, and Finnish Prime
Minister Matti Vanhanen raised the EU's concern over the
functioning of the Russian legal community.
Ahead of the formal EU-Russia summit at the end of
November in Helsinki, Vanhanen sought to pave the way for a
new economic and energy cooperation agreement between the
two major powers. Despite intense efforts, he encountered
resistance from Poland, which blocked the new negotiations
demanding that Russia lift its import ban on Polish food.
In the autumn, a Finnish study suggested that Finland
build a sixth nuclear reactor. The one-man investigation
that worked on the government's mission also found that more
domestic renewable energy and possibly an expansion of
hydropower is needed to ensure access to electricity. The
country's fifth nuclear reactor is under construction.
"New" and "old" direction in Finnish politics
After the cease-fire, the so-called "new direction"
required not only foreign policy course change, but also
democratization of society, social reforms, purging of
"fascist" elements in the state apparatus that the "old
direction" politicians should resign, etc. The leadership of
the "new direction" 'Consisted of the so-called peace
opposition. It was mostly social democrats, but also some
bourgeois politicians who, during the war, demanded a quick
peace settlement. The backbone of the "new direction"
consisted of the trade union movement and the communists. At
the Social Democratic Party meeting in 1944, the peace
opposition suffered a narrow defeat. After this, a large
part of these, together with the opposition forces from
1940-41 and the communists, formed the Democratic Union of
Finland's People (DFFF). At the 1945 parliamentary
elections, the union gained almost 1/4 of the vote.
By early 1945, the JRC leadership had entered into a
cooperation agreement with the Communists. It helped
increase the membership of the organization from 50,000 -
the average in the 1930's - to approx. 350,000 in 1947. It
remained at that level until the 1960's. From 1946, the
struggle between the Social Democrats and the Communists
intensified so strongly that the Social Democrats in the
trade union movement were forced to seek help from the SDP
leadership. This quickly led to the Social Democrats
gathering.
In the Agrarian Confederation, the "new direction" never
amounted to more than a small minority. The party's
participation in the coalition governments from 1945 to 1958
was based on a determined effort to preserve the existing
community and, above all, the interests of private
agriculture.
There was also an international background that, as early
as 1947, the "three stores" coalition was close to being
dissolved from within. The Cold War brought the "old
direction" representatives back together. They launched a
campaign against the DFFF and took advantage of
contradictions within the government coalition. In the 1948
elections, the communists also had to take a serious
setback. They were isolated from government policy.
The "old direction" nevertheless failed to change the
country's foreign policy. Opposition forces were so weak
that Paasikivi did not have much difficulty in forcing his
view that Finland, for example, could not. should renounce
Marshall aid and stand outside the OECD. The fact that the
Finns had pursued a policy that satisfied the Soviet
interests led Stalin to consider in 1948 the Finnish wishes
in the negotiations for a "friendship, cooperation and
assistance pact" (VSB Pact). Military cooperation was
limited to war threats only to Finland or to the Soviet
Union through Finnish territory. The collaboration was also
made dependent on mutual discussions and consultation. The
VSB Pact therefore differed from the agreements of the same
name entered into by the Soviet Union with the democracies
of Eastern Europe.
In the 1948 election, there was no party going against
the Paasikivi line in foreign policy. |
