Did any of you watch A-Talk with two government representatives, Iris Suomela of the Green League, Center Party Finance Minister Annika Saarikko, and two opposition representatives, Perussuomalaiset (PS)* head Riikka Purra, and National Coalition Party MP Antti Häkkänen?
One matter stood out: Purra’s aggressive style and talking out of turn when Suomela spoke. Her facial expressions and body movements reinforced her disdain for the Green League MP.
After her party suffered a big setback in the regional elections and saw its support in a Yle opinion poll plummet by three percentage points to 15%, it is clear that Purra is a bit on edge.
Apart from being a poor leader, which is coming to bite her party, she sounds like a broken record scapegoating migrants, especially asylum seekers, mostly Muslims.
Purra is a person who has shown beyond any doubt her Islamophobic colors. In one debate, during the regional elections, she suggested that foreigners living in Finland should not get social welfare. While her suggestion is unconstitutional and her party’s wet dream, not a single reporter asked if she took her comment seriously.
While Purra reiterated on A-Talk that she would want Finland to have emergency powers to halt all asylum applications in case of an emergency, we are left with the question of her long Islamophobic track record and credibility to speak on immigration issues.
A person who would want to suspend social welfare to foreign residents would not think twice about feeding asylum seekers to the dogs.
Häkkänen is an interesting politician who has as well a xenophobic history. When he was in the Mäntyharju city council before he was elected to parliament, he refused to give up his meeting fee to new quota refugees moving to the Eastern Finnish town.
Some in his hometown claim that Häkkinen has never held a real job.
Both Suomela and Saarikko did a good job at answering the attacks by Purra and Häkkinen.