It’s clear that the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party has become more hostile to migrants, minorities and our ever-growing cultural diverse community after their poll ratings took a beating recently.
Remember when PS MP Teuvo Hakkarainen said that international agreements and our constitution didn’t permit the populist party from carrying out their policies?
We read a while back how Social and Health Minister Hanna Mäntylä, who would do everything possible to water down migrants’ rights in Finland, seeks to change the social welfare system on the basis of nationality and ethnicity.
Certainly with most of the party’s campaign promises broken and poll rating flirting with the single-digit league, the PS has one important trump card left to muster support: suspicion of migrants and refugees.
Mäntylä believes that if we lowered social welfare to migrants and refugees but kept it the same for Finns it would discourage people from coming here. Her logic is based on the idea that people of the Middle East aren’t fleeing war but flocking to Finland to live off social welfare.
The plan, to create a two-tier system for social welfare is unconstitutional because it would make non-Finnish citizens unequal before the law. Section 6 of the constitution clearly states that everyone in Finland is equal before the law.
The reason why the PS gives mixed messages on such unconstitutional plans is because it needs to assure its supporters that it is still a party that sees migrants and cultural diversity with tweezers.
Finland has been talking for many years about how its population is graying and how it must attract young people to the country. Today we have tens of thousands of refugees coming here but instead we are trying to find ways to send them back.
The PS is an expensive and damaging experience for Finland that won’t leave anything good except its bigotry when its time to bow out of government becomes a reality.
Hopefully sooner than later.
*The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.