One of the biggest questions some observers have asked for a while in Finland is what political house of horrors will appear after Timo Soini retires and the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* return to the minor political leagues? We got the first glimpse of that answer today when PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho announced that he too is vying for chairman of the party.
Soini, the PS’ long-term leader who will step down in June after leading the right-wing populist party for 20 years, has given a home to eccentrics like Halla-aho, among many others.
This time, however, matter didn’t go according to plan as he got bit by the same anti-immigration forces he unleashed against our ever-growing culturally diverse community.
The whole story of Soini’s political creation, the PS, could be summed up in two scenes from the 1930’s classic Frankenstein.
The first scene below is when Dr. Frankenstein creates his monster.
In the second scene the monster destroys his creator.
The main contenders that are vying to lead the PS, Terho and Halla-aho, are no different from each other. Both are against cultural diversity, the EU and are neoconservatives at heart.
Halla-aho, for instance, believes or gives the image of invincibility. All he needs is one election loss, like the one he has now accepted, to experience an irreversible setback. He is vulnerable and mortal like any elected official.
Both, who have built their respective political careers on far-right nationalism and using migrants as scapegoats, are the most terrible matters that could befall Finland.
The good news, however, is that none of them can fill Soini’s shoes because they lack charisma.
Probably that’s the face they need to show at the time as their party exists major league politics and returns to the minor political leagues with a tiny thud.
* The official translation to Finnish of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party is the Finns Party. In our opinion, it is not only a horrible translation, but one that is misguided. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Such terms like the Finns Party of True Finns promote as well in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and thereafter the acronym PS.