Our Prime Minister has now made official visits to Tallinn and Stockholm where she received a warm welcome. Estonia has always been an important neighbour for Finland because we are physically so close – just 50 to 70 kilometres across the Baltic and our two languages share many common words. The Estonians were super friendly even though a foolish Minister of the Interior spoiled everything when he called her a “Sales Cashier Girl”. Old bald men just can’t stand female competition… he must be longing for the days when he could get away with such chauvinistic comments. Anyway she ignored him…
In Stockholm there is a new awakening to deepen Finnish and Swedish cooperation. It takes two to tango, and up until recently Finnish Prime Ministers have been wary of Swedes, and vice versa. They have been like two brothers facing off one another and making sure that the other does not get any unearned benefits. Given our small countries, our strong cultural ties of history and language, and given that our businesses are tightly intertwined, one should be really surprised that more cooperation has not happened sooner!
Anyway it was encouraging to watch our two Prime mInisters talking together on a first name basis. Military cooperation is increasing and we could see much more in terms of media and culture. As mentioned above, there are a huge number of significant relationships and cross-ownerships on the business side. The unfortunate weak link that many on both sides feel is what can be called the language deficit. Swedes do not speak or understand Finnish, and many Finns would rather speak English than Swedish. Every Finn has to learn Swedish at school and for the great majority this is a painful experience. Few see Swedish then as a useful asset…
How wrong they are but such is life. If an obligatory subject is felt to be unimportant at school then being forced to learn to get a pass grade leaves a black scar in your brain.
You may remember that a group of 20 politicians from the True Finns mutineered to form their own party, the “Future Blues” they were called, to then join the government in 2017. At the time a new leader was appointed as head of the True Finns and he was seen to be untrustworthy so the True Finns were thrown out and replaced by the mutineering Future Blues. Now 3 years later, every one of the Future Blues members of parliament failed to be re-elected and now they are mostly on the dole! That new leader is still around and according to the polls he is now running the most popular party in the country. So far none of the other parties have been willing to cooperate with them but if he can maintain his position for the next 3 years then that may change since the biggest party after elections gets to try to form a government. But your correspondent is fairly sure that they will crash into the swamp before long because they are designed to remain in opposition ands most of their manifesto looks like a Trumpian Bible – the similarities on immigration, climate change, fast cars and meat are striking…
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
