Finnish parliamentary election – April 19th 2015

[seb_pard]

Why the support for the Left Alliance is so high in Kemi?

[Helsinkian]

Hmm...interesting.  You see that ring of blue around a dot of yellow - I'm assuming that that's Helsinki proper surrounded by rich suburbs that would naturally vote for the center-right.

The small dot of yellow surrounded by blue is actually Kauniainen, a small wealthy suburban municipality in the Helsinki region, where the Swedish People's Party and the National Coalition Party are the two big parties, the first of them more popular this time. http://vaalit.yle.fi/results/2015/parliamentary_election/?parties_uusimaa_kauniainen_#2_235#graafi

In Helsinki proper NCP was still the most popular: http://vaalit.yle.fi/results/2015/parliamentary_election/?parties_helsinki%20electoral%20district_#1#graafi

The People's Party is centrist.  Does it lean towards the right or the left?

Right. Ideologically it's quite close to the NCP (especially the current NCP led by Stubb).

[Helsinkian]

Why the support for the Left Alliance is so high in Kemi?

They and their predecessors the communists have been the biggest party in Kemi for a very long time. The city has had more traditional industry jobs than many other cities in Northern Finland (and a history of labour clashes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Kemi_strike), but I can't explain why the Left Alliance has been able to hold onto that blue collar demographic better there than elsewhere. In any case the Leftists of Kemi are definitely the old-fashion blue collar industrial workers, and not the "Red-Greens" that the party attracts in Southern Finland.

[Helsinkian]

Centre Party's Juha Sipilä has been officially tasked with forming a new government coalition. He has sent all the parliamentary parties a set of questions, which should be answered by 30 April (stances on the economy, taxes, debt, security, EU, immigration, environment...). Sipilä has said that next week he will announce the parties with which he wants to form a coalition. After that there will be more detailed negotiations on the coalition's platform.

[Helsinkian]

Juha Sipilä has announced that he seeks to form a three-party coalition consisting of the Centre Party, the Finns Party and the National Coalition Party. These parties have 124 seats in the parliament. Sipilä hopes to have the coalition negotiations finished in three weeks time.

It is believed that Timo Soini will become the Finance Minister, while Alexander Stubb will become the Minister for Foreign Affairs (of which he has prior experience).

[FredLindq]

As I projected. But why did he not include the christiandemocrats?

[Helsinkian]

As I projected. But why did he not include the christiandemocrats?

Ideologically they would have been a good fit, but there still was no need to include them: with 124 seats the coalition already has a big majority. In 2011 CD was included in the coalition partly because of the need to balance the power of right- and left-wing parties in Katainen's coalition, but this time there was no need for that. Another factor is that Sipilä wants to reduce the number of Ministers to 12, and there's little room for small parties in that plan.

[FredLindq]

Thanks! This has to be the most rightwing guvermennt in finnish history?!

[Helsinkian]

The coalition negotiations have ended, and the Sipilä cabinet is due to be appointed on Friday. Here is how the minister portfolios are divided between the three parties (14 ministers overall):

Centre Party (6 ministers)

• Prime Minister
• Minister for Economic Affairs (= mostly industry and entrepreneurship)
• Minister for the Environment and Transportation
• Minister for Families and Basic Services
• Minister for Agriculture and Forestry
• Minister for Municipalities and Administrative Reform

Finns Party (4 Ministers)

• Minister for Foreign Affairs
• Minister for Justice and Labour
• Minister for Defence
• Minister for Health and Social Services

National Coalition Party (4 Ministers)

• Minister for Finance
• Minister for Education and Culture
• Minister for the Interior
• Minister for Foreign Trade and Development

The most surprising thing is that Soini of the Finns Party preferred the Foreign Affairs portfolio to the Finance portfolio. He has been chairman of the parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee for the past four years, so that is his area of expertise, though. Putting Justice and Labour in the same portfolio also strikes me as an odd decision. Environment and Transportation are also in the same portfolio, even though the Ministries are kept separate. This probably had a lot to do with the need to cut down on the number of Ministers.

Edit: Environment affairs have been moved to the Agriculture portfolio.