Members of the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) elected conservative leader Petteri Orpo as the country’s prime minister on Tuesday, who will govern with the support of a coalition of parties that includes the extreme right.
The Orpo, which won the legislative elections on April 2, obtained this Tuesday 107 votes in favor and 81 against in Parliament. Another eleven deputies did not attend the voting session.
The new prime minister, from the conservative National Coalition Party, will head a government still made up of the Finnish Party. [de extrema-direita]for the Swedish People’s Party [SFP – representante da minoria finlandesa de língua sueca] – and the Christian Democrats, in a coalition that has an absolute majority with 108 deputies out of a total of 200 in Parliament.
The new Executive – the most conservative in the recent history of the country, according to local media – is made up of twelve women and seven men, with a greater female presence in relation to the outgoing Executive of the Social Democrat Sanna Marin.
In addition to the head of government, the National Coalition Party – which won 48 deputies in the last elections – will assume seven ministries: Foreign Affairs, Defense, Environment, Labor and Culture.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be in charge of the vice-president of the National Coalition Party, Elina Valtonen, while the Ministry of Defense will be in charge of Antti Häkkänen, also vice-president of the party, who will be in charge of integrating Finland’s defensive systems into NATO. , after its recent entry into the Atlantic Alliance.
The Finnish Party, the second most voted in the last elections, with 46 deputies, will also have seven ministries, including Finance -which will be held by its leader, Riikka Purra-, Interior, Justice, Foreign Trade and Health.
In this way, this far-right and Eurosceptic party takes several important posts in the Finnish government and will have great weight when it comes to dictating economic and immigration policies.
In addition, the presidency of the parliament will be in the hands of the ex-leader of the far-right party, Jussi Halla-aho, Purra’s mentor and representative of the most xenophobic wing of the formation, sentenced in 2012 for publishing anti-Islamic texts. opinions on his personal page on the internet.
The SFP, a small party that has been in almost all but one of the Finnish executives in the last half century, will take over the ministries of Education, European Affairs and Sport, although the latter for only half a term.
The other half of the legislature, the Sports Ministry, will be headed by the coalition’s smaller partner, the Christian Democratic Party, which will also take over the Agriculture Ministry.
Source: TSF
