The start of the new governing coalition in Finland, with the participation of the right-wing populists True Finns, was disastrous. Hardly a day goes by without racist embarrassment. A conversation with Secretary of State Elina Valtonen on how to save the country’s reputation.
Ms. Valtonen, your country is regularly recognized in the World Happiness Report as having the happiest people in the world. If so, why do happy people vote for extremists?
As far as the True Finns party is concerned, not everyone there is as mega extreme as one can read from many newspaper articles at the moment. My understanding of society is that you always have to give people a chance to improve. The roughly 600,000 Finns who voted for them are not extremists. These are people in northern Finland or eastern Finland who are affected by structural change. But there are also middle- and even high-income people who worry about the national debt.