The Finnish papers on Monday focus on the Greek elections and what the results will mean for the European Union and Finland moving forward. Helsingin Sanomat says the left-wing Syriza party came away with a landslide victory on Sunday, but it still wasn’t enough to secure a clear majority. The party is two seats shy of a simple majority, which would have allowed it to found a government alone. The centre-right New Democracy party, led by Greek’s Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, won just under 28 percent of the vote and came in second. The third most popular party was the extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party, which received 6.3 percent of the vote, entitling it to 17 seats in the 300-member parliament.
The paper says Syriza’s leader Alexis Tsipras has promised to renegotiate Greek’s sizable loans and the terms and conditions they entail. He yelled “troika is history” upon hearing the election results, referring to the three major creditors that have supported Greece’s bail-outs: the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. Tsipras said Greece is now turning a new page, leaving behind years of humiliation and pain.
Europeans have followed the Greek elections carefully, says the paper, not only because a win for Syriza could in a worst-case scenario mean that Greece leaves the common currency of Europe, the euro. Finland’s leading paper quotes the French news agency AFP as remarking that Syriza is the first anti-austerity party to win a major election in Europe, and its victory is expected to galvanize similar parties in other countries, particularly in Spain and Portugal, where elections are scheduled to take place later this year.
“We were right all along”
The tabloid Ilta-Sanomat turns to ever-eager Timo Soini, head of the opposition Finns Party, for his take on the Greek result. Soini is certain the Greek election will have an impact on the Finnish parliamentary elections in April. He also said he doesn’t believe that Prime Minister Alexander Stubb and Finance Minister Antti Rinne would dare to have a hand in renegotiating Greece’s debt before the elections. “Last time around it had a big effect, and now people are beginning to notice that we were right all along,” he says in the paper.
Paavo Arhinmäki, chair of Finland’s own prominent leftwing party the Left Alliance, says Syriza’s election will have repercussions in the future success of Europe’s other left-wing parties, but doesn’t share Soini’s opinion that it will affect Finland’s elections. “Europe is now presented with the possibility to pursue another kind of politics, after seven years of austerity,” Arhinmäki says. He says it is clear that Greek debts need restructuring, but he feels Syriza’s most urgent priorities are restoring Greece’s health care system and getting food to the needy.
The other of Finland's two major tabloids Iltalehti continues with more talk of the upcoming Finnish elections, speculating that controversial MEP Jussi Hallo-aho of the Finns Party is purposely sabotaging his party’s election chances by not participating in the April elections. The opinion piece says Halla-aho’s decision not to run is calculated to break up the party, topple chair Timo Soini and improve his own position. Without the votes that the widely-popular anti-immigrant Halla-aho can bring in, the populist Finns Party will have trouble maintaining its 18 percent voter base. Halla-aho says the Finns Party is guilty of election fraud by not pursuing a more restrictive migration policy.
Räsänen changes her mind
And finally, Ilta-Sanomat looks at Christian Democrat party leader Päivi Räsänen’s change of heart on home care allowance distribution. Although she was a member of the coalition government that first came up with the idea in December 2013 to split the home care allowance granted to Finland’s parents between both parents equally, and approved of the idea yet again in a second round of cabinet talks last summer, she has now declared in Helsingin Sanomat on January 22 that her party does not support the proposal.
By way of explaning her change of heart, Räsänen says she initially approved of the idea of a re-distribution just so she could take part in drafting the bill, but says her wishes on the matter were ignored in the drafting process.
Prime Minister Alexander Stubb’s coalition is now heavily dependent on the Christian Democrat’s support, after losing the Left Alliance and the Greens League left him with a razor-thin majority in parliament. The Greens may just support the home care allowance change, however, as they were also active in preparing the bill.
The government seeks to change Finland’s current home care allowance practice in the name of encouraging more fathers to participate in child care and improve women’s employment status. If the father chooses not to use the leave that is entitled him under the new bill, it cannot be transferred to the mother.
The tabloid says it is easy to criticize the project for limiting families’ choice in the matter. Money is often the deciding factor driving women to stay home with their small children, as men are often the bigger earners. Even if the bill is approved and the law is changed, says Ilta-Sanomat, it is hardly likely that dads will start staying home to take care of their children en masse. Instead, women will return to work earlier, when their share of the allowance runs out, putting more pressure on municipal day care services that are already at capacity. The government will present the proposals to Parliament this week.
_This story was edited on 27.1.2015 to correct errors noted in the home care allowance section. Mothers CANNOT use home care leave that the fathers chose not to utilize, and the Parliament will not yet consider the bill in plenary session. _
