#literally saw a comment say this country has spent the last 20 years appealing to other races and they are still upset

[kacievvbbbb]

I love when people say Feminism is ruining our society and then people rightly bring up all the things feminism has directly done for women and they go oh not that Feminism that feminism was good and needed I’m talking about Modern feminism the one that we have now that’s stupid and unnecessary. Women don’t need feminism anymore feminism should have ended after (enter whatever major historical female win but usually the right to vote)

And it’s like how do I tell you that at every point in time at every “stage” of feminism (yes even the first one) people were using the exact same arguments on why it was unneeded. Like truly if you do not study history you’re doomed be be repeating the exact same fucking talking points.

[piilukko]

Electoral Shenanigans II – Finnish Municipal boogaloo

Finnish Municipal Election of 2017 is over and the votes have been cast and counted – at last, one might say after seeing months of campaigning and advertising.

Note: if you are entirely unfamiliar with Finnish politics and political culture, you might want to start here, for example, for a crash course how we got to this point and about the so called The Finns Party, our version of the right-wing populist movement. You might also want to check what a Finnish municipality actually it and what does it do. 

Worth noting is that those things are not entirely fixed. In the past municipalities were allowed to things like banning sales of all alcohol. They had the power to set regulations on public order – all of which was replaced by a state-wide Public Order Act in 2003. At moment government working removing healthcare and welfare from municipalities responsibilities and setting up county administration for them – but parties disagree and at the moment no one is 100% certain what a Finnish municipality is going to be in the future. And last and not least: not all Finnish people are entirely familiar with this either. Most of the candidates are ordinary people, not career politicians. The council members get financial compensation, but not salary, it is not their job. Sometimes people campaign and vote based on matters entirely beyond the scope of municipal politics.

Municipal elections are often seen as some kind of “half-way there” elections between parliamentary elections (both the parliament and city and municipality councils have four year terms and nowadays the municipal election really occur in the middle of the parliament term). Commentators often try find if policies on governmental level are having an effect on municipal level, if the voters are sending a message to cabinet ministers and the parties, but probably at least some voters are ignoring those factors altogether and voting purely on local matters. Especially in small town, where people know at least some council members personally – a Finnish municipality can be anything from Helsinki ,with its 600k residents,  to small villages of couple of hundreds residents – and the median is a couple thousands residents.

So, despite we kinda had like over 300 separate elections on the same day, with technically speaking nothing do with each other, maybe we can look some of the themes.

The True Finns lost big time. They are a populist party with a long history of as anti-establishment protest party for conservatives – anti-immigration, anti-European Union, anti-LGBT, anti-environmentalism, anti-whatever those damned hippies, liberals and bicyclists are trying this tme. A party for the honest heterosexual, white, meat-eating, house-owning. car-owning common man (and also the common woman, should she accept the traditional gender roles), we’ll also take good care your old mother struggling on her small pension, as long as you vote us and accept Carl G.E. Mannerheim as your lord and saviour.

Somewhat like Trump? Maybe, the main difference being a different political system and culture, the D’Hondt election system used here has it disadvantages but at least it’s not first-past-the-post and allows for a real multiparty system. True Finns chairman Timo Soini started building the party in the 90′s and started gaining more and more support election by election. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union (which meant old school communism lost most of its appeal) Finnish politics have featured The Big Three of parties. Included are The Social Democrats – a moderate (very moderate) left-wing party). The Centre Party – a party started as the Agrarian League having moderate success in cities but absolutely ruling the rural areas. The National Coalition – the right-wing party, sometimes quite far on the right, I mean not as in nazi far-right, but on the political compass the they are scattered like some one fired a shotgun towards the right side of the chart – but at least they don’t hate people of color, they just hate people of no money. Especially their youth organization often sees no shame in literal minarchism (ironically they started as the monarchist party)

And at least for a moment, Soini was able to manage to transform this triumvirate into The Big Four, with the True Finns actually gaining more votes than the Social Democrats. And if you think I make this sound like a one man project, it truly is, in modern politics in Finland there are no other mainstream examples of the same person leading one party for twenty years.

Well, then they joined the government (as in were not in opposition anymore, if you are unfamiliar with consensus politics) in 2011 and their voters found out that not only they were unable to banish all foreigners (or at least the black people or at least the Muslims) like some of their voters must genuinely have believed. They also found no problem supporting the National Coalition’s and Centre Party’s austerity policies (remember the old mother and her pension) and also were unable to stop the loaning money to Greece (lost story short:most experts agree we are definitely not getting back, Greece is broke) and so their approval ratings made a historically bad dive. 

Not only their voters, many True Finn council members all around the nation lost their faith in the party, saw the writing on the wall or found out their party was full of brownshirts – be it ideological reasons or just hopes to be at least somewhat re-electable, they chose to switch parties mid-term. One famous example was Youtube celebrity Tykylevits, who as a very surprising move secede from True Finns and found the Green Party chapter of his small home town, gaining Greens two seats of 27, a significant feat in the middle of Centre Party country.

So, The True Finns lost roughly speaking one third of their support and I hope this is the start of their end as the natural lifespan of a populist party full of air reaches its finale. We cannot get rid of them altogether, but at least on the national level they will once again be a fringe party. They might go far-right (this time I mean nazi far-right) depending who will be elected as the chairman after Soini decided to not run for the position anymore – and most importantly who will remain, candidate-wise and voter-wise, when it becomes apparent the support for the “working man’s party” is fading. One of the main candidates for the seat is Jussi Halla-aho, a well known anti-immigration and anti-gun control zealot with very little opinions on anything else. Anway, the parliament election is in 2019 and I expect to see them losing similar amount of votes there.

The True Finns in Tampere were a great example of the mess the party is in. Their local chapter chairwoman was expelled from the main party, officially because of a minor economical mishap regarding travel expenses (which the party claim she did on purpose), I think it was really because she was too far-right for a party with parliament seats. Anyway, the chapter chose not to expel her (despite this being clearly against party rules) and instead chose her as one of their candidates. 

On the other hand they spent shitloads of money campaigning (on the local radio stations for example) against the Tampere tramway project, even though the council already voted green for it (48 votes against 18), they are already building the tracks and the city would have to pay reasonable amount of mount (I think 10% of the actual costs of the project?) to several companies if they scrapped the project at this point. And after all, the TF could have just said that they were against the project, the lost in the voting, they accept it and now they will concentrate on other matters.

This is not exactly how you get sensible people vote you, right, even if they agreed with you? They lost five of their ten seats.

The Big Three all got roughly 20% support each, nationwide, and there’s not much interesting to say about that. They all have lots of very loyal supporters and I would be surprised to see very rapid changes in their support nationwide, even thought this might happen in individual municipalities, where it all might be about whether some local popular person chooses to run for the next term or not. The same applies to the Swedish Party which is smaller but get’s the same amount of votes anyway every time.

The Greens won, about everywhere, getting their greatest share of votes in any Finnish election (Pekka Haavisto’s success in the presidential election of 2012 does not count) . They have branded themselves as the opposite of the True Finns – main themes include enviromental issues (including but not limited to climate change), LGBT rights, anti-racism and generally trying to keep the Finnish welfare state with free education and such from disintegrating. Bicycling activists and public transport advocates tend to join the party, first openly gay MP was Green, you get the idea.

For many urban dwellers who don’t care about politics that much, they are becoming the default party – “the Good Guys you should vote if you’re on the side of the Good Guys”. The transformation of a pure nature preservation society to a political party fighting for wide range of issues has alienated some of the hardcore environmentalists but was, I think, absolutely necessary, because the great masses (and not even yours truly) are not willing to accept the strict “eco-fascism” of likes of Pentti Linkola. I’d say they are the 21th century version of the Social Democrats. (The Social Democrats on the other hand, are still the 20th century version of themselves and will gradually lose MP seats because their voters die. Of old age)

One of the biggest surprises was Jyväskylä, where Greens become the biggest party, I think for the first time any city, ever. Might be because it’s midsize city with a rather big university, might be because some very popular candidates with personal following.

...and then there’s the Left Alliance, which started from the ashes of former communist parties but has reform itself to basically “we are just like the Greens, but we are also socialists” – emphasizing the old cliche that while The Greens refuse to define themselves on the traditional left-right scale, many see them as the “park and forest department of National Coalition”. As a challenge, The Left has it “industrial wing”, labour union activists, some of them who might not be willing to sacrifice jobs on the altar of environmentalism, should these two factors be at odds.

And at last, an election where the Left got more votes than last time, hooray! A moderate victory, but a victory nonetheless. Under the lead of very charismatic Li Andersson, it is possible the party may see similar success in the parliamentary election –hopefully the party will never again choose to enter the government with the together National Coalition, a move that was seen by many as selling-out, motivated by the party elite’s lust for “the backseat of a black Audi”, a common phrase symbolizing the prestige, luxury and financial compensation of a cabinet minister. 

(Yours truly voted for the Left so there might some bias in this post)

And then there’s the Christian Democrats, who changed their name to match a certain German mainstream party but are a fringe party still. They’re mostly from certain fundamentalist sects, liberal mainstream Christian usually joining other parties. They managed to get some more votes this time, perhaps because of their new chairwoman, an Olympic medalist in race walking and thus a former national hero. On the other hand, her predecessor was so unpopular she became one of the main memes in Finnish Tumblr and other social media.

Feminist Party, a newcomer, gained one seat in Helsinki, I suppose mainly because their chairwomen was invited to the fringe party panel on the TV and as one might guess, for a good public speaker it’s rather easy to look sane and professional, the other participants usually including libertarians and several communist parties unable to co-operate. 

I have mixed feelings about the party, I think there’s a lot of work to do in animal rights (a newly formed Animal Rights Party participated the same panel), ethnic minorities rights, feminist issues, QUILTBAG issues, environmentalism, city planning, not to mention class struggle, what else, and within this political system and D’Hondt voting, separating all these issues to their own separate parties sounds like the worst possible outcome. But what can i say if some-one feels that no other party is feminist enough? 

On the municipal level there’s always space for smaller players – Helsinki council has 85 seats and it’s all one voting distinct (no gerrymandering is possible) and many councils have local movements not participating in the state-level politics at all. On the parliament level, I fear the Greens, The Lefts, The Feminists and The Animal Rights Party will compete from the same votes and for example in Tavastia Proper only 14 MP seats are available and this might even mean none of them getting any seats. Satakunta and Lapland Distincts are even smaller. Hopefully they at least agree on electoral alliances.

Yarrr, The Pirates managed to get one seat in Helsinki and one in Jyväskylä (see the notion of Jyväskylä being a university town). I don’t share their idea of entire abolition of copyright, but they have a snowball change in hell in implementing it and otherwise many of them offer a welcome addition to politics. Many of them are IT professionals, municipal expertise in those issues (like buying infrastructure and support) has traditionally been scarce.

And finally, the Communists lost. After the mainstream communist parties (yes, that was a thing in Finland) crashed, burned and rose like the Phoenix as the Left Alliance, several people were unhappy with this, mainly because LA was not, well, communist, and promptly founded the Communist Party of Finland again. In the post-Soviet atmosphere, they have never got any MP seats or anything like that, but the municipal councils are another thing for them too and they actually have managed to have several seats in council, most famously in the big cities of Helsinki and Tampere.

Yrjö Hakanen, their former chairman, is popular character in the political life of our capital. I think not all his voters even are communists themselves, after all, in the city council he cannot seize the means of production, but he can and will speak for the poor, the old, the ill and the unemployed. Tampere, on the other hand, has historically been known as the “Red City” and only partly because brick-walled former factory buildings (these days used as museums and office space). But alas, in neither of the cities there were enough votes for the party and then something happened, something that in the 1970′s would have been bourgeoisie daydreaming and still in the 1990′s was hard to imagine – there will be no communists in the council.

The same happened in some smaller towns too and I haven’t checked all the election data, but it might be that last stronghold for literal communist will be Nokia (the city, not the phone company or the tyre company), and even there their seats we reduced from three to one.

(This didn’t not stop Timo Soini from announcing “bicycle communists”, whatever that means, have taken over Finland)

(There’s also “Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism”, yes, that is their official party name, but that’s an another story and not a very popular one)

EDIT: The Social Democrats lost support. With the True Finns collapsing and “freeing” 3.5 percent points and Coalition and Centre losing one point each. one would think, that one of the old “major” players, SDP, would gain support. No, they lost also a little from municipal election of 2012. Although they are bragging about a rise in popularity compared to the parliament election of 2015, I think that’s comparing apples with oranges.

So I went back in history and checked all the elections, checking all municipal, parliament and European parliament elections compared to previous one of the same kind – YLE and Wikipedia make this very easy – and the result is devastating: sometimes a party wins and sometimes a party loses, but last time SDP gained seats was in 2004. 13 years ago. That was before Youtube, several years before Finns started joining Facebook and so on. (I’m not saying this just for scale, SDP is definitely not a social media party).

This is beyond the scope of this post and this election, but I think, if no drastic changes of party image, organization and leadership are made, The Social Democrats will become a mid-size party, perhaps even a small party, someone has to fill the void and The Greens my guess who will fill a lions share of this void.

And then to the “I am not making this up”-section of this post.

Paavo Väyrynen is Finnish political legend, an MP and MEP for many terms, a minister of several cabinets, a long time Centre party chairman. He has always been and will always be – at least from my point of view, he was elected to the Parliament before I was born. He’s very hard to explain to any foreigner (after all, he’s from the Centre and that party itself is very hard to explain, why the agrarian party is often the most popular). 

He’s a dinosaur from the seventies, a player of games, the trickster of Finnish politics. He gets involved in scandals, is sometimes hit but them but surfaces again like a Whack-a-Mole. He has solid support in Northern Finland. He runs for parliament and refuses to accept the seat he won’t get a minister position. He’s chosen by the party on “suicide mission”, a disposable way past his “best before” candidate for a doomed campaign against Sauli Niinistö, he has fun and manages to bring himself back to spotlight of politics. The party gave him the title of “honorary chairman”, apparently because he was too valuable and popular to let go, but too dangerous and unpredictable to let to interfere with actual politics.

So he started his own party, which made the Centre Party expel him: except by the party rules, the main office cannot do that, the local chapter should expel him and he’s their hero. Party does not want to expel the entire local chapter and the situation remains stalemate.

However, while his new “Citizen Party” is already in official party register and should be able to appoint candidates to all elections, Väyrynen chose to enter the municipal election. In Helsinki. As an independent candidate on the candidate list of... Christian Democrats. Apparently he had composed an army of NIMBYs (mainly against building more apartments to Helsinki allowing it grow), including some far-right activist. The Christian Democrats found out about the nature of these candidates after the candidate list were already fixed, so they just chose to shun these people from their posters.

However, none of the problematic candidates were elected – Väyrynen himself was, with over thousand votes. Now we wonder should he accept the seat, after all, he might have technically difficulties attending council meeting, considering the fact that he is at the moment a MEP.

Finnish politics would be much, much more boring without Paavo Väyrynen.

Pictured: chairman of the Greens Ville Niinistö celebrating victory; Paavo Väyrynen