The last opinion poll published by Helsingin Sanomat doesn’t show us any big surprises. A few percentage-point fractions up or down and, end of story. If, however, we take a longer view, the situation of the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) raises some questions.
Just like Jutta Urpilainen and the Social Democrats learned before the 2011 parliamentary elections, which revealed the ugly face of racism and our toothless reaction to it, copying the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* is a bad idea.
Apart from the Social Democrats, Blue Reform, which splintered from the PS in June 2017, tried and utterly failed at becoming a “light” version of the PS.
With the municipal elections scheduled for this spring, Kokoomus is feeling the heat. Instead of lowering the heat of racism and bad taste, they are just raising throwing more petrol on the fire.
The best example of this strategy’s failure under the leadership of Petteri Orpo is the latest opinion poll.
Orpo and his party are trying to be a light version of the PS’ racism and populism but are failing. The failure of such a political strategy would be costly.
One of these campaign messages by Kokoomus is by Atte Kaleva, who states in the tweet below that “I have a dream: Helsinki without communists. Let’s work together to turn this into a reality.”
How many Finns vote for the Communist party anyway? Does 0.1% sound right for the whole country?

One wonders about Kaleva’s desperation and how he is sucking up to populist buffoonery, and how Kokoomus, like the Republican Party of the US, have veered to the radical right.
If you think of it, the same is happening in Finland right under our noses: Kokoomus is becoming more populist and abandoning its liberal ideology to cozy up to the PS, which terrorizes – just like Trump’s voters – all those that disagree with it.
Wake up Kokoomus, wake up Finland, before it is too late.
