Not only is this year important for Americans, it’s election time in Finland too. Municipal elections to be precise. Last year’s general elections brought forward the big surprise of True Finn- party rising to the ranks of big political parties and now the bets are on they’re going to win big time again. I voted a True Finn- candidate last year because I felt betrayed by the Green Party who failed to prevent the new nuclear power plant and Social Democrats, who, well, basically are republicans hiding in communist’s clothes.
So how am I preparing for the election? Various media outlets have questionnaires for finding suitable candidates, like YLE, MTV3 and Helsingin Sanomat and naturally I tried all of them. How did it work out for me? Not well. Not a single candidate in the top 10 was the same in all three. So instead of narrowing things down, I’ve gotten 30 choices. Woot. Not only that, most of the candidates suggested, are from the Green Party. The party I swore I wouldn’t ever vote again because the Nuclear Power Fiasco.
So what is a girl to do? True Finn’s had only 1 candidate in the TOP 30, Green Party and Social Democrats are a definite no-no. National Coalition Party? Don’t make me laugh/want to punch you in the face. Christian Democrats? Since I’m all for LGBT- rights then hell to the no. Swedish People’s Party of Finland? Um. No. That’s another political hot potato that can make me rant for hours. Centre Party? They have strong support in the rural areas, Lapland included but as a child of the big recession of 90s, I and many others of my generation, still pay for the decisions made then so they are a forever no-no too. What are my options? There’s only one woman that showed up on two lists and that’s Susanna Kaukinen from the Left Alliance. Is she my candidate? She agrees on many points with me, she’s an engineer so there’s the bonus point for the geek factor and she’s not too old, about 40. To be sure, I’m going to re-do the questionnaires tomorrow to see if I get the same results. If I do, there’s still the final phase of cyber stalking the candidate before I make my informed decision.
How about you? Do you vote? Where do you vote? When are you voting? Why do you vote and do you stalk your candidate? If you are interested, here’s a link to a list of Finnish Political Parties on Wikipedia.
Thrifty Finn calls it a night and goes to sleep feeling a like a good citizen.
My brother suggested I may like this blog. He was entirely right.
This post actually made my day. You can not consider just how a lot time I had spent for this info!
Thanks!
We Dutch know all about voting, have done quite a lot of that recently. Wish at least one of our governments would last the entire 4-year-term this time! Thing is, too many people just vote for the face of someone without even taking a closer look into the programs themselves. Not smart, because then they start complaining afterwards. Media play such a major role, too, seems that it’s all about the looks these days. There aren’t many strong people out there. Hope you can reach the right decision Niina, good luck!
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In Finland the problem is that media does nothing. It’s role should be the “guard dog” but usually anything that should force the government to step down is reported very briefly and then swept under the carpet so to speak. Only political party that gets attacked by media is True Finns which is odd as they had no power in the decisions made over 10 years ago which now make life of an average Finn very hard. Another problem is corruption which in Finland has been explained just as “the way of doing things”. Which was very fun for me on 2008, another election year, when our rents were raised 18% to get funding for a candidate from the Centre Party. It’s nothing short of a miracle that the he actually got busted and is now in court. His defense is “I had no motive”. Yeah, like 90 000 euros isn’t a motive…
So many parties. We have a few in the US, but it’s hard to know that there are more than Democrats and Republicans. We also have Green Party.and several small ones that can’t get on the ballot. I vote. Never Republican or Libertarian and very rarely Democrat.
The 2-party politics seems very dangerous to me, it might have worked in the beginning but has nothing to do with a modern society. Anyway, voting is important and people should remember that.