The Finnish government crisis is keeping the country in such suspense that a British journalist colleague recently joked, he is considering activating a live blog, as dramatically as the situation is escalating. So first an update from the past few days: on Friday last week, all five opposition parties called for parliament to be called out of the summer break in order to debate “national and international criticism of the government’s actions”. Some of the parties wanted to initiate a vote of confidence in Riikka Purra, the leader of the right-wing populist “True Finns”.
Texts had previously appeared in which Purra fantasized about shooting in suburban trains, spoke of “Turkish monkeys”, urged beggars to be spit on and black children to be beaten up. The texts are from 2008. Purra is finance minister and deputy prime minister. Purra initially explained on her blog that she didn’t have to justify anything and only formulated an apology a few days later.
Speaker of Parliament says critics of ‘True Finns’ suffer from ‘psychosis-like states’
According to the Finnish Constitution, the Speaker of Parliament decides whether there are important reasons for calling MPs together during the idle time. This post is held by Jussi Halla-aho, himself a member and chairman of the “True Finns” for several years. Purra posted her racist comments on her blog Scripta 15 years ago. Halla-aho himself published such racist texts on Scripta that he was convicted of hate speech.
Halla-aho rejected the opposition motion on the grounds that the situation was not urgent enough and that parliament’s independence had to be protected against “external pressures”, referring to posts on social media and “the left and green media”. . He had previously said that the critics of the “True Finns” suffered from “psychosis-like states”. According to the constitution, the speaker of parliament should act in a non-partisan manner.
At the weekend reported in Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest daily newspaper three constitutional lawyers who criticized Halla-aho for his decision. Veli-Pekka Viljanen, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Turku, argued that while the constitution allows the president wide discretion, Halla-aho has not acted unconstitutionally. “But the central idea of parliamentarism is the dialogue between the government and the opposition. It is very unusual that the entire opposition considers it necessary to interrupt the parliamentary recess. For this reason, the question is very important and I think the speaker would have it should agree.” The other two lawyers argued similarly.
Purra’s hate speech was not an isolated case. Economics Minister Vilhelm Junnila had previously had to resign due to Hitler jokes, racist abortion fantasies and connections to the neo-Nazi scene. His successor was accused of sexual harassment by several young women. The interior and justice ministers, both from the ranks of the “True Finns”, have repeatedly cited the right-wing extremist conspiracy myth of the “great exchange”.
The liberal coalition party RKP was “concerned about the functioning of the government”
The liberal Swedish People’s Party (RKP), one of the four coalition parties that is already struggling with the nationalist orientation of the “True Finns”, held an emergency meeting on Friday and was “very concerned about the functioning of the government (… ). We would now like to give Prime Minister Petteri Orpo time to assess the situation and have a serious discussion with the leaders of the ruling parties.”
The ball is now in Orpo’s hands. He was on a state visit to Berlin this weekend and emphasized there that “there is no right-wing extremist party in the Finnish government” and that the “True Finns” have “changed” for the better since 2017. During his visit, new hate speech by Riikka Purra came to light.
Orpo likes to emphasize that the previously incriminated texts are from 2008. These were from 2019, and Purra described the veiled Muslim women in them as “black sacks”. An online petition calling for her resignation has been signed more than 100,000 times, which is a lot for a population of five million. Loud Helsinki Sanomat dare many Somalis no longer on the streetssince Purra’s lyrics were republished.
Petteri Orpo blames at least part of the coalition mess on the Social Democrats, who have refused to form a coalition with his conservative coalition party KOK. That’s not true, the Social Democrats were willing to form a coalition, they just ruled out assuming government responsibility together with the “True Finns”. You can find many in the newspapers find lyricsthe showthat Orpos KOK long before the elections substantive solidarity with the “True Finns”.
It says on Riikka Purra’s blog still the lyrics in which she writes that it would “never occur to her to resign or regret what I did and said years ago”. The word “hävettää” has been trending in the Finnish Twitter world for the past week. In German: embarrassing.