FROM OUR REPORTER
TAMPERE AND HELSINKI — At the Tampere market it appears like a tulip in a sea of black coats (it’s -5°C): vermilion lips, pale red cashmere, leather jacket. December 8, 2019 was her first day in government and she, Sanna Marin, the youngest prime minister in the world at 34, wore a somber knee-length suit and no trace of makeup. April 1, 2023 may be her last day in full office as prime minister: in 40 months and a pandemic and a war, the world has changed, and so is she. It might cost you something in the elections.
Today we are voting in Finland and the prime minister’s party, the Social Democrats, is only third in the polls, so prescient here that it puts the decimals: yesterday the National Coalition Party was at the top, the centre-right party next the top 54-year-old Petteri Orpo with 19.8%; then the “Fins” of Marin’s nemesis Riikka Purra with 19.2%. Finally the Social Democrats, 18.7%. The government is formed by the candidate of the party that receives the most votes; the one in office will remain to handle current affairs pending the formation of the new one, which is expected to arrive in the summer. Consultations start on April 17th. “My heart is high, I know we’ll make it,” Marin exhales with a smile among fans who beg her for photos. Tampere, with a working-class past, is his city.
But she won’t vote for her contemporary engineer Janne Palttala, for example, walking through the rally. “Too aggressive, too intense. Demonize your opponents.” As he speaks, the square applauds Marin. What did he promise? “More nurses in nursing homes.” In fact, Marin and Palttala are few here. The cheering crowd is mostly pensioners. One waves a crutch to cheer.The front row is a line of walkers.A poll by Helsingin Sanomat three years ago found that there were more party members over 90 than under 35.Marin’s rally looks like a postcard from an idyllic Past that seems to have been eroded here by 15 years of global crises: Hyvinvointivaltio, ie welfare state, is the buzzword that can actually only be pronounced in these latitudes.
“The country’s best resource is not the forests, they are the brain,” Marin thunders and applauds: For six minutes he talks about the 14th rally about the school, “which we will bring back up to the best standards”. . The specter is Estonia, which beat Finland for first place in the OECD’s Pisa tests. «Growth does not come from lowering corporate taxes, but from research and development». Then health care, inequalities, subsidies. It takes her an hour to leave: everyone wants a photo with her.
«Marin’s approval rating is high: 62%. And 69% for women,” explains Marko Junkkari, columnist and editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat. “And they like it abroad.” From all over the world, today 60 accredited journalists. Then why is he dragging himself? Do you blame the “Partygate” that overwhelmed you last summer? “NO. It pays for political mistakes». The Center Party will no longer meet: “To the left.” By ruling out that it would ally itself with the sovereigns, “it broke a tradition of very broad agreements”. And with Orpo he can hardly govern: he is a statist, he calls for 6 billion cuts.
“The deficit worries me,” said economist Martin Paasi, owner of a podcast on financial education and candidate at Petteri Orpo. “With Marin, we owe 10 billion a year.” 45% of public spending is social safety nets. “There are 200,000 unemployed, instead of feeding them we have to train them: there is a labor shortage, but supply and demand do not match.” Arguments that bring votes in the economic crisis. “Ours are not a waste, but an investment,” emphasizes Sanna Marin from the Lempäälä stage, the second rally of her last campaign day. “Nobody is left behind” Queues at the party stands, where sausages or pancakes are traditionally offered. The trademark of the SDP is the pea soup. “Like the military,” recalls one member. One million 700,000 Finns voted early; the remaining 60% vote today.
“If you have teetotaler friends, bring them with you”: 79-year-old party matriarch Tarja Halonen, the first female President of the Republic (between 2000 and 2012, ed. The Italian Chronicles, since Silvio Berlusconi said he was given the residency in Parma of an EU agency, in which Finland was also interested, “to dust off my Playboy skills with her”). Will you see your colleague again? “Very. And I’m proud of her. She had four unthinkable years, and she came out great ». Nonetheless. Among the critics, Marin is often accused of “nervousness”: in the campaign’s iconic photo, she and Riikka Purra are arguing in a TV studio, while Orpo laughs.
Emaciated, tested by the “Party-Gate”, Marin has just bought a house in a neoclassical building in the elegant district of Töölö. If he doesn’t win and has to leave Kesäranta’s abode, he will stay there immediately. Maybe alone. Divorce rumors are rife in the gossip capital: the joint press release with her husband Markus Räikkönen is in the drawers of a PR memo and is waiting for the result of the vote. For his possible new life as a “loser”: “I think he doesn’t want any ministries, not immediately. Maybe he’ll run for the presidency of the republic,” speculates Junkkari. Others think NATO. Töölö is not far from the Karhupuisto stage, where Star Sanna Marin’s campaign ends.