As the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* starts to implode with third vice president Sebastian Tynkkynen demands that the populist anti-immigration party exits government, its self-destruction will not be caused by outside factors but from within.
One guiding star of the PS is not only its inexperience but outright ignorance that shows us the ugly face of its racism.
Teuvo Hakkarainen, a PS lawmaker, said something incredible over the weekend as did Social and Health Minister Hanna Mäntylä of the same party. One said it outright while the other one said it indirectly.
Hakkarainen was quoted as saying in Oulu-based Kaleva that international agreements and the Constitution hinder the PS from realizing its policies.
Mäntylä, who has a fixed obsession against asylum seekers, proposed again that asylum seekers should be treated unequally before the law and should not have equal access to the law and social welfare.
Read full story (in Finnish) here.
Yes, you read right: Hakkarainen states that we should change the constitution and shelve international agreements to we can socially exclude and treat migrants as third-class citizens in Finland.
Even if Mäntylä wants to undermine migrant rights in Finland, there have been landmark cases in the courts of Finland that have ruled against such plans before, according to Sakari Timonen’s blog. The only way that the PS will succeed at lowering social welfare to migrants is by lowering it for everyone in Finland.
Is that the master plan? Lower social welfare for migrants so you could lower them for everyone?
Hakkarainen’s and Mäntylä’s statements are disgraceful and another example how the PS wants to turn Finland into a country like Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
Shame on Kaleva and the rest of Finland’s media for not questioning such suggestions firmly and defending our constitution, which is helping us not slip into a populist dictatorship.
The sooner the PS implodes the better for Finland. And it seems that that is what is happening today.
* 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.