Sunday is parliamentary election day in Finland. The elections will be very interesting, since the True Finns (Perussuomalaiset) have been alarmingly popular in preliminary polls. The True Finns is a populist, right-wing (on the Finnish scale), NIMBY-ish party, and their possible success has caused mild horror amongst many, especially my friends.
This election is also different for me personally. For the first time I voted for another party than the Greens, namely, the Left Alliance (Vasemmistoliitto). A long story short: I’ve been utterly disappointed in their work in the government, in which I don’t think they should have entered in the first place. Their negotiation position in a centre-right government with two strong parties was lousy to begin with: the two large parties, the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) and the Centre Party (Keskusta), would have had a majority in the parliament even without the two smaller parties in the government, so in practice they’d really not have to care about the smaller's opinions at all. A part of good government custom, however, is to stick with the government’s line in votings. In practice, this means that the smaller government parties have to support the line dictated by the bigger parties. (Ok that was exaggerated, but you get the drift.)
To be completely honest, I can’t remember exactly all of the things that put me off during the past four years – we have a saying in Finnish that “the people’s memory is short”, and so is mine. The obvious achievements of the government are e.g. the omission of the employers’ KELA fee, Lex Soininvaara (yes, I do understand the logic behind it, but nevertheless it was a shitty solution) and Lex Nokia. All in all, I recall a lot of facepalming during the electoral period as well as my disappointment steadily growing. Even if the Greens have voted against some decisions, they still as a government party are held responsible. Their last chance to maintain their dignity in my eyes was during the voting for new nuclear plants. The Greens had reserved themselves the right to vote against the plants, and so they did. However, the parliament green-lighted not one but TWO new plants, and so the Greens are now part in a government that gave its blessing to something heavily in contrast with the Greens’ fundamental values. At this point, I think the Greens should have left the government, as they did in protest in exactly the same situation in 2002. There wasn’t much of the election period left anyway, and the government work had already been miserable – and as said, it would have spared their dignity in my eyes (and my vote for them).
The Greens still are the best party for me on paper, but my honour stands against voting for them now after all this disappointment – it feels like sending them a message that their work in the government has been A-OK and no probs entering a pro-nuclear, right-wing government in the future, either. Sorry, can’t and won’t do that.
I’ve anyway waddled somewhere between green/liberal*/left, so giving my protest vote to the Left Alliance wasn’t that difficult a decision. What bugs me the most is that they’re so vaguely for the basic income – the Greens still are the only party that explicitly have taken it in their electoral programme. Thank goodness the Lefts aren’t against it [any more?], but as basic income is a topic immensely important to me, their bland “let’s try to harmonise the social security system in the possible direction of basic income maybe in the very distant future” is very “meh” to me. Well, I guess I’ll have to live with that for now, since I already gave my vote. Hopefully, in the next elections I can either vote for a green party with some re-achieved dignity, or a more pro basis income Left Alliance.
* political liberal, not to be confused with economic (neo)liberal/libertanianist/whatever you wish to call it
Meh
No comments:
Post a Comment