Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, who has gone from one scandal to the next, got booed by a large crowd in Helsinki on New Year. Perussuomalaiset (PS)* speaker of parliament, Maria Lohela, who has built her political career by spreading Islamophobic rhetoric, states on her Facebook page that the Finns have lost touch with their good habits by booing the prime minister.
Lohela, like her populist anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party, the PS, couldn’t be more out of touch with Finland and reality. Politicians like her, who are very selective and suffer from political amnesia, are outright deceitful.
Lohela finds herself in “good company” in the Nuiva manifesto in 2010. She is one of thirteen people who signed the manifesto with three PS politicians (MEP Jussi Halla-aho, former MP James Hirvisaari and Kotka city councilman Freddy van Wonterghem) who were sentenced for ethnic agitation as well as others who have made their political careers by attacking migrants. Some of these are MP Juho Eerola, MP Olli Immonen, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, PS party secretary, and seven others.
Other Nuiva manifesto signatories are MP Juho Eerola, MP Olli Immonen, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, PS party secretary, and seven others.
What does Lohela really mean when she claims that Finns have lost touch with their good habits? Shouldn’t she take a good and long look at herself in the mirror and ask about all the lies and exaggerations she has made about Muslims and migrants in Finland? What about her “good manners?”
No, Lohela, we haven’t forgotten and won’t forget all the horrible things you have written about us until you apologize for what you said.
In Lohela’s world, she’d want the most vulnerable sectors of our society, like the unemployed and single mothers, to thank the prime minister for all the budget cuts that have impoverished them. Asylum seekers are another group that could be “grateful” to Sipilä and his government for tightening family reunification laws.
Dream on, Lohela, dream on.
Maria Lohela is not my speaker of parliament.
* 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. The direct translation of “Perussuomalaiset” is “basic” or “fundamental Finn.”