Finland election: voters may pick first leftist prime minister in two decades

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian


Antti Rinne’s Social Democrats are leading the opinion polls but nationalist Finns party are not far behind

Reuters
Sat 13 Apr 2019 23.13 EDT

Finland may usher in its first leftist prime minister in two decades in parliamentary elections on Sunday, as voters worry over the future of their welfare system amid the rising costs of caring for a rapidly ageing population.

But if opinions polls are correct, the left-leaning Social Democrats’ ability to govern may be hampered by a surge in support for the Finns party, a nationalist group riding a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the Nordic countries.

A survey commissioned by public broadcaster Yle showed the Social Democrats could win the top spot with 19% of the vote, giving their leader, Antti Rinne, the first shot at forming a government.

The Finns party is running close second with 16.3% support, after securing rapid gains since the start of the year when a series of cases of sexual abuse of children by foreign men emerged.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/14/finland-election-social-democrats-lead-polls-finns-party

[sandensea]

1. All the Best to them

It's worth nothing that the more "conservative" parties in Finland, such as the Center and Agrarian parties, would themselves probably be considered pretty left of center here in the U.S.

The same of course can be said of most mainstream "conservative " parties in Europe.

Back in 2012 or so, when it had become a favorite go-to tactic for the GOP to compare Obama unfavorably to Merkel, I had to remind a Republican co-worker that "if you knew the least thing about about German public policy, you wouldn't be so fond of Merkel."

"You'd certainly not use her as a model for modern GOP policy - which is more like something out of an Argentine dictatorship."

Never heard squat about Merkel (or Obama) from that cretin again.

[Lucky Luciano]

2. Right wing in Europe basically means racist. I'm beginning to think it's the same thing here.

In other words, Medicare for all white people would probably win a lot of right wing voters here.

[yaesu]

3. I think their right wing politicians are centrists in much of their political

views, as are the majority of Scandinavia. They don't suffer the right wing nuts, maybe a few anti-immigration lately, but overall they are like the pre-Nixon republican party. Glad to see they are moving more to the progressive parties as conservatism has been tainted for life thanks to the religious & capitalist extremists.

[BigmanPigman]

4. Here's the petition to sign at the link.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/suspend-trump-from-facebook-and-twitter/

"Tell Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook to take down Trump's hateful video and permanently suspend his Twitter account. We don’t have to give hate a platform."