True Finns may move from four percent of the vote to Finland’s fourth party.

True Finns (Perussuomalaiset), which calls for strict immigration restrictions and for Finland to pull out of the EU, appears to be gaining more and more support.

According to a YLE Survey published on Friday, 10.7 percent of Finns would vote for True Finns if a Parliamentary Election were held tomorrow. Due next year, such an election result would make True Finns the country’s fourth largest party – after the co-governing Centre and National Coalition and the opposition Social Democrats – giving them as many as 20 seats in the 200 seat Eduskunta. The complications of Finland’s ‘Regional Proportional Representation’ mean that it might receive fewer seats if its vote thinly spread nationwide. In the last election, the party got four percent of the vote but just five seats. 

Timo Soini, the party leader, has told YLE that he is aiming for fifteen seats and, possibly, two cabinet places in a coalition government. He would be interested in the Interior Ministry and the Employment Ministry.

True Finns MP Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner opined that the rise of her party might be due to a perception that the mainstream parties are corrupt and have been taking election funding, especially from the Nova business group, because they are sympathetic to the group’s interests.

‘I have never taken money from anybody,’ she stressed. ‘About ten years ago, when I was in local politics, a businessman said he could help my political career if voted in favour of building a bridge. I said ‘No!’ and was very angry that he tried to buy me.’

She also wondered if increasing awareness of ‘problems’ caused by immigration from developing countries has assisted the party, which wants immigration controls ‘like in Norway.’

‘We have Somali women, they live here for fifteen years, and they cannot speak Finnish or Swedish. When they go to the school … When they go to school to talk with children’s teachers  they need an interpreter. And sometimes children are “family-interpreters”, they have to help adults.  In Finland, in our culture, women and men are equal when they are working or studying.’

Prof. Kari Paakunainen, a politics expert at Helsinki Open University, attempted to explain the party’s rise: ‘ Many people in Finland have very uncertain experiences and feelings in the midst of high unemployment and competitive global  economy. On that account people are thinking that there is an on-going dirty game of political and economical elite unconcerned about the everyday life conditions of people’s majority,’ he said.  

‘The competitive economy and requirement of entreprising mind in global world is more a fear than a chance for the supporters of True Finns. Therefore the simple-minded and half-fundamental True Finns issues about immigrants, employment and national-local order-values are  popular ones. Non-educated people living in contingency need a kind of catharsis – a fundamental and aggressive turn – in politics,’ he suggested.

‘Young people are, also, observed by a charismatic leader of True Finns, Timo Soini. Soini’s party is identified as a leftist party among young people – it means an idea of change, “replacement (change) of blood”, in politics.’

If True Finns were to gain seats in government, it would not be the first time. True Finns was established in 1959 as the Finnish Rural Party, appealing mainly to small farmers. It 1970 it garnered 10.7 percent of the vote and in 1983 its 9.7 percent of the vote (and 17 seats) made it part of a right-wing coalition government led by the National Coalition Party. It took charge of the Transport Ministry and the Finance Ministry.