EvilSpaceAlien
Prime Minister of the Underworld
- Location
- Bland sörlänningar
- Pronouns
- he/him
The Finnish People's Party (FPP) (Finnish: Suomalainen kansanpuolue (SKP), Swedish: Finska folkpartiet (FFP)) is a Finnish nationalist political party which was founded in 1962 as the Finnish People's Front. The party was formed by members of radical wing of the Democratic Coalition Party, who had left their party due to disagreements over the official party line, which was to push for greater Finnish autonomy rather than full independence. The FPP has been the largest political party in the Finnish parliament since 2012 and in government since 2015, first in a coalition with the Democratic Coalition Party and since the 2019 election it has been governing as a minority government, supported by the Republican Socialist Party.
During the 60s, 70s and 80s the party was considered a fringe force in Finnish politics, often accused of ties to militant Finnish separatists. The party's first leader, Tapani Hämäläinen, made a name for himself through a number of controversial actions, such as appearing in support of the defendants at the trial following the 1972 Tammerfors Riots, or often using his speeches to urge people to show their displeasure towards the Stockholm government by vandalizing Swedish-language street signs. Faced with a party accused of at best tolerating or at worst instigating harassment of the quarter of the Finnish population which had Swedish as their first language, the rest of the parties in the Finnish parliament erected a strong cordon sanitaire around the FPP during these decades. The party began a journey towards moderation in 1987 with the election of Sauli Rajamäki as party leader, who distanced himself from previous leaders' association with extreme groups and emphasized that the only legitimate way to fight for Finnish independence was through peaceful democratic elections.
Strengthened by the party's best results ever in the 1991 election, Rajamäki moved to broaden the party's appeal further during the early 90s with changes in the party constitution which saw all references to the party aiming to be the defender of the Finnish-speaking population of Finland struck, replaced with text that instead defined the party's aims as being to represent all Finns, regardless of whether they spoke Finnish or Swedish. This was a major shift in direction for a party which in its early days had elected MPs which portrayed Swedish-speaking Finns as colonizers who would be deported to Sweden upon Finnish independence.
"We need to become a party that any Finn in the country could consider voting for. As I've often said that means that the worker in the paper mill needs to be able to tell his Swedish-speaking neighbour that he voted for the People's Party without feeling any shame. But it also means that his neighbour should be able to look him in the eyes with pride and say: 'So did I'."
-Speech by Sauli Rajamäki at the 1994 FPP party conference in Vasa
The other Finnish political parties were initially sceptical of these changes, viewing them as a little more than superficial, so the cordon sanitaire remained for most of the 90s in the Finnish Parliament. However things were different on the municipal level which was where the FPP was finally let in from the cold and allowed to take part in coalitions with other political parties, often as a junior partner to the Democratic Coalition Party. That party would also be the first to break the taboo against working with the FPP in government, by inviting them to join a coalition after the 2000 election. From 2000 to 2008 the FPP was truly in power for the first time, with Sauli Rajamäki serving in the government as Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance alongside five other FPP ministers. The coalition broke apart shortly before the 2008 due to disagreements over farming subsidies, and afterwards the Democratic Coalition opted to join the Labour Party in a grand coalition instead, making the FPP the leading opposition party. Rajamäki remained as leader while in opposition, leading the party to a tremendous success in the 2012 election where it became the largest party in parliament, albeit by a slim one seat margin. The grand coalition continued in spite of this setback, but Sauli Rajamäki was looking more and more like a Premier-in-waiting. However tragedy struck in October 2014 when Rajamäki was found dead in his bed by his wife, an autopsy later revealing that he had suffered an aneurysm in his sleep, killing him two weeks shy of his 68th birthday.
The leadership was quickly thrust upon Jonna Stenberg Mäkinen, a 30 year old rising star in the party who had only been elected Deputy Leader the year before. She would only be in the job for a couple of months before being faced with her first electoral test, as the Labour-DCP grand coalition collapsed at the start of February, setting the stage for an early general election. The election saw the FPP underperform slightly compared to the opinion polls, but it was still a significant improvement on the 2012 result. With another Labour-DCP coalition impossible given the results, Jonna Stenberg Mäkninen entered the official Premier's residence Villa Aura in Åbo as the first FPP Premier.
Jonna Stenberg Mäkinen is an unusual figure within the Finnish People's Party not only because she was born and grew up in Sweden, but because she did not grow up in a Finnish-speaking household. She was born as Jonna Viktoria Stenberg in Härnösand, Sweden to Oskar and Johanna Stenberg, both professors at the University of Härnösand. At the age of 11 she showed a great deal of interest in learning more about the Finnish heritage that she had on her mothers side of the family, and in particular with learning the Finnish language, something which was greatly encouraged by her mother as her parents had not passed down the language to her due to dying while she was still young. The studies of the Finnish language and history eventually led her to enroll in a Finnish-speaking secondary school in Vasa at age 13 when her parents had moved to the city to take up lecturing positions at the Bothnian University. This was when she first came in contact with the Young Finns, the youth league of the Finnish People's Party, an organisation which appeared to share her passion for all things Finnish. While she hadn't shown a great deal of interest in politics prior to joining the youth league, the discussions at the weekly meetings awakened a keen interest, and soon she was handing out leaflets and participating in school debates as if she had been a member for six years, not six months.
When her parents moved on to new positions at Torneå University she brought her new interest with her to her new city, becoming President of the local chapter of the Young Finns. There she made a name for herself in the local press as a prominent leader for the Yes campaign in the 2001 Torne Valley referendum, in which Torneå and a number of majority Finnish-speaking municipalities in the Swedish county of Norrbotten held a referendum on whether they should join Uleåborg County and become a part of Finland. While the referendum was ultimately lost by a narrow 53-47 margin, it helped Stenberg to make a name for herself within the youth league, helping her to get elected to its national board at the 2002 conference. The same year she was elected as the first and only FPP representative on the Torneå City Council at age 18, further cementing her status as a rising star within the party. Upon moving to Åbo in 2006 to pursue her Master's degree in Economic history she stepped down from the Torneå City Council and appeared to be stepping back from frontline politics for a while. Though she didn't stay away for long as the FPP selected her as their candidate in the Åbo St. Karins constituency for the 2007 Nordic general election. While the constituency was majority Finnish-speaking by a margin of 70 to 30, the relatively affluent urban middle class that lived there had never been particularly friendly towards the FPP. The best an FPP could usually hope for in Åbo St. Karins was to break 15%, but this was not usual circumstances.
The incumbent Liberal MP Viktor Segerström was first elected in 1986 and had served as Minister of Transport since 2001, in that role being a crucial driving force behind the planned rail tunnel and bridge combo which would connect Åbo and Stockholm through Åland. Unfortunately for him that project had angered a large number of environmental campaigners and local NIMBYs in the constituency who was fearful of the impact the railway would have on the environment and the local community, given that it would pass through the constituency. The Labour candidate taking him on looked set for victory in what was usually a Labour-Liberal marginal, but his campaign was derailed early on when a number of homophobic and sexist remarks came to light. Then you had Stenberg. As a young woman from a family of middle class academics who grew up speaking Swedish at home, she was the antithesis of the stereotypical People's Party representative: a slightly overweight middle aged working class man from the countryside who could barely speak a full sentence in Swedish. This was not the reason people voted for her, but it was reason people started listening to what she was saying. The two big parties were caught completely off guard by the unexpectedly strong FPP campaign and scrambled to catch up, but it was too little too late. In an incredibly close three-way race Jonna Stenberg became the new MP for Åbo St. Karins by a margin of 976 votes.
Overnight she had become a major national sensation, branded as the future of FPP and invited to just about every interview you could think of. But in parliament Stenberg opted to take an entirely different approach, careful not to make too much noise and focusing entirely on constituency service and crafting policy proposals which actually had a chance of getting through the Riksdag. This didn't get her more attention in the media, but it did give her a reputation within the party as someone who had substance and was something more than the post-election headlines. Having proved a relatively popular MP in her first term it was then no surprise when she was reelected with a substantially increased majority four years later, by then having married and changed her name to Stenberg Mäkinen. Realizing what an asset she was the FPP wasted little time in offering her a spot on the regional list for Finland Proper in the upcoming Finnish parliamentary election, an offer she easily accepted. This was the first time she was faced with major criticism from the press and the voters, who accused her of ditching her constituents and running away to a another job only six months after being reelected. Clarifying that she would still remain as the MP for Åbo St. Karins didn't really help things either, with constituents complaining in the papers that the were under the impression that they were voting for a full time MP, not a part time one.
While that controversy was a bit of a bump in the road, it certainly did nothing to stop Stenberg Mäkinens meteoric rise through the ranks of the party. For all the rules and democratic traditions in the local chapters of the party, once you were at the top there was only one person that mattered. If Sauli Rajamäki didn't take a liking to you then you definitely had no future in the parliamentary party, but if he did you could expect great things to come your way, and he certainly took a liking to Stenberg Mäkinen. When his longtime deputy Merja Sakala announced her retirement he was the one who urged Stenberg Mäkinen to run for the position, seeing her as the perfect person to go into the next election campaign with. He was an old farmer from Hirvensalmi nearing his 70th birthday, she was a young academic from Åbo who hadn't even turned 30 yet. They could provide the perfect balance between experience and change, with his precense appealing to the base and her potential to attract voters who otherwise wouldn't consider voting FPP. Alas it was not to be, Jonna Stenberg Mäkinen would be the one who led the FPP back into government, becoming the party's first Premier in the process. Her five years in office have had their ups and downs, with a generally strong economy being of great benefit to the government, helping the FPP sail through reelection in 2019 with a substantially increased seat share, enabling the party to govern alone with support from the small pro-independence Republican Socialist Party.
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