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Finland The Parliamentary Election of 1983
As is customary in Finland after a presidential
election, the
government resigned after Koivisto's victory in January
1982. It
was re-formed the next month with the same four-party
coalition
(the SDP, Kesk, the SKDL,and the SFP) and many of the same
ministers, with veteran SDP politician Kalevi Sorsa as
prime
minister. Two devaluations in October 1982, amounting to a
10
percent fall in the value of the Finnish mark, caused
complaints
by the SKDL that low-income groups were the main victims
of this
measure designed to enhance Finnish competitiveness
abroad. The
cabinet fell at the end of the year, when Sorsa dissolved
it
after the SKDL ministers refused to support a government
defense
proposal. Asked immediately asked by the president to form
a new
government, Sorsa did so, but with LKP participation and
without
the SKDL. The government's slender majority of 103 votes
in the
Eduskunta was not an important handicap, for new elections
were
scheduled for March 1983.
The election was widely regarded as a "protest
election"
because, contrary to expectations, the major parties, with
the
exception of the SDP, did not do well. The LKP lost all
its seats
in the Eduskunta, while the SMP more than doubled its
seats, and
for the first time the Greens had representatives in the
chamber
as well. The SMP's success was credited, at least in part,
to
voter distaste for some mainstream parties because of
political
scandals; no significant policy differences emerged in the
election campaign. Another reason for the SMP gains was
the
increasing role of "floating votes" not bound to any one
party.
The SDP won fifty-seven parliamentary seats, the greatest
number
since before the war and a result of Koivisto's election
to the
presidency.
Seven weeks of negotiations led to the formation of a
fourparty coalition composed of the old standbys, the SDP,
Kesk, and
the SFP, and, for the first time, because of its great
success,
the SMP. The protest party of the "forgotten man," the SMP
was
given the portfolios for taxation (second minister of
finance)
and for labor, with the aim of taming it through
ministerial
responsibility. Because the government, led by the SDP's
Sorsa,
had the support of only 122 votes out of 200, rather than
the 134
needed to ensure the passage of much economic legislation,
it
might not have been expected to last long. It
distinguished
itself, however, by being the first cabinet since the war
to
serve out a full term. Its survival until the elections of
March
1987 was an indication of a newly won stability in Finnish
politics.
The Sorsa cabinet stressed the continuation of
traditional
Finnish foreign policy, the expansion of trade with the
West to
counter what some saw as too great dependence on Soviet
trade,
and the adoption of measures to reduce inflation
(see Role of Government
, ch. 3). The economic measures of the Sorsa
government
were stringent and fiscally conservative. Public awareness
of the
necessity of a small exporting nation's remaining
competitive
allowed the adoption of frugal policies. The 1984 biannual
incomes policy arrangement was also modest in its scope.
The
rival demands for the one for 1986 were less so, however,
and
President Koivisto had to intervene to ease hard
negotiations.
One segment of the work force, civil servants, won a large
pay
increase for itself after a seven-week strike in the
spring of
1986. The government also brought inflation down from the
doubledigit levels of the early 1980s, but it was less
successful in
lowering unemployment, which remained steady at about 7
percent.
Although the government was to be long-lived, it was
not free
of tensions. In January 1984, trouble erupted when its
three
nonsocialist parties made public a list of nine points on
which
they disagreed with the SDP. The issues were domestic in
character, and they centered on such questions as the
methods of
calculation and payment for child-care allowances, the
advisability of nuclear power plant construction, wage
package
negotiation methods, and financial measures to aid farmers
and
small businessmen. The storm caused by the document was
calmed by
the political skills of the prime minister and through a
lessened
adamancy on the part of Kesk.
Despite overall agreement on many major issues and the
dominance of consensus politics in the governing of the
country,
the parties' struggle for power was nevertheless fierce.
Attacks
on the SDP by its coalition partner, Kesk, during 1986
were seen
by some to stem from Kesk's desire for an opening to the
right
and for the eventual formation of a center-right
government after
the 1987 elections. The attacks, especially those of
Foreign
Minister Paavo Vayrynen, intensified in the late summer.
The
young Kesk leader particularly denounced Sorsa's handling
of
trade with the Soviet Union. Sorsa sucessfully
counterattacked in
the fall, which forced Vayrynen to stop his campaign.
Data as of December 1988
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