Tag: populism

YLE poll: PS sees its support nosedive to 10.7%

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The latest poll published by YLE shows that support for the populist anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party has plummeted, diving in one month by 4.3 percentage points to 10.7% and since the April parliamentary elections by as much as 7 percentage points.

It is the biggest fall ever seen in such a short time in the polls by a party.

The exceptionally poor result of the PS boosted the Green League to fourth place in the poll with 12.7%.

The biggest surprise is the Social Democratic Party, which saw its support rise by 3.9 percentage points to 18.3%.

While all government parties saw their support fall, none of them suffered such a sharp drop as the PS.

The Center Party continues to be the biggest party in Finland with 21.7% (-1.2%) with the National Coalition Party seeing its support fall by 0.9 percentage points to 18.0%.

Näyttökuva 2015-10-8 kello 15.09.10

 

Read full story here.

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Facebook: Finland’s abstension and pitiful explanation why

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland’s ambassador to Switzerland, Jari Luoto, isn’t too happy about Finland’s abstention on Tuesday when interior ministers met and decided to distribute 120,000 refugees. 

The reason why Finland was the only country to abstain, apart from Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland that voted against, is because we have a populist anti-immigration party in government.

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* foreign minister, Timo Soini, has done a lot of harm to Finland’s image and its relations with Sweden.

On Monday he blamed Sweden for helping asylum seekers to come to Finland. He said that its western neighbor will help terrorists and traffickers if Sweden continues to have such open borders.

No wonder people like Luoto are concerned.

Näyttökuva 2015-9-23 kello 23.42.09

 

* 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 the 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 Perussuomalaiset is a racist and far right party because…

Posted on by Migrant Tales

No matter how much Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party member Matti Purkonen, MP Sampo Terho or Timo Soini assure us that they are against racism and fascism,[1] the more they incriminate their party. Renouncing racism and far right ideology would be tantamount to committing political hara-kiri for the PS. 

Should we be surprised on Friday by PS party secretary Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo’s claim that four out of five refugees coming to Europe are only economic migrants? Should we be surprised by PS MP Olli Immonen’s declaration of war against “the nightmare of multiculturalism” and his ties with neo-Nazi groups?

Not at all. What you see is what it is.

There are two matters that the Finnish media doesn’t get with the PS and hasn’t connected the dots:

  1. The PS grew from obscurity thanks to the fact that society saw Somalis as a negative factor and that they would get rid of this “problem;” [2]

  2. Soini is seen for some odd reason as the “good cop” of the PS who is trying to bring in line racists, xenophobes and fascists to whom he gave a political voice in Finland. The media should stop giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Everyone knows that the PS will fail in  ridding Finland of what it thinks is the Somali “problem,” which now includes as well Muslims and Middle Easterners.

Continue reading “The Perussuomalaiset is a racist and far right party because…”

Swedish People’s Party Carl Haglund: Who wants to move to Finland knowing that a price tag will be placed on your forehead?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Imagine a country that needs skilled labor due to the rapid graying of its population and whose new government still doesn’t know whether immigration brings benefits or not? Well that country, folks, is none other than Finland. Yes, the country that saw over 1.2 million of its people emigrate between 1860 and 1999 to the world and which saw the rise of an anti-immigration party from the minor political leagues to become the second-biggest party in parliament.

The party, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, bases its newly acquired power on its anti-immigration message and strengthening “us” against “them.”

It recently published a study, which got a lot of criticism due to its methodology, which concluded that immigration costs Finland 700 million euros.

It didn’t matter if the study had a lot of methodological holes because its main aim was to send a clear message to its voters: We don’t want migrants unless they’re white.

Government immigration affairs are under Justice and Employment Minister Jari Lindström, a former paper mill worker who later became a lab assistant.

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Read full story in Finnish here.

Chairman of the Swedish People’s Party Carl Haglund had at the party’s annual convention harsh criticism or the new government and echoed what Migrant Tales has been saying for a long time.

Continue reading “Swedish People’s Party Carl Haglund: Who wants to move to Finland knowing that a price tag will be placed on your forehead?”

Why you should not call the Perussuomalaiset “the Finns Party”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland will become the third country in the EU along with Belgium and Greece that will have a populist and anti-EU party in government, according to The Guardian of London. The daily describes the Finns Party as far right. Just like Migrant Tales, it uses the acronym PS but mentions the official English name of the party once in the story below. 

The reason for using the Finnish acronym for the party is simple: The name is horrible in English and has nothing to do with the Finnish name, which is the Perussuomalaiset and can be translated as “true” or “basic” Finn. Some have even translated it as “fundamental” Finn.

At Migrant Tales explain in all of our stories why we use the Finnish name of the party on our postings:

The Finnish name of the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names 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.

PS party secretary Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo was asked about this on Ruben Stiller’s Pressiklubi  why the party had “kidnapped” the name to imply that all Finns are the party. She said it was a good name that other parties hadn’t noticed and was used because the PS represents all types of Finns from academics to workers.

Näyttökuva 2015-5-25 kello 10.46.28

Who would you believe? PS MP Hakkarainen or the little girl at sea?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Who would it be? Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Teuvo Hakkarainen who got reelected below for claiming that newcomers should adapt or ship out of Finland and “a sharp no to asylum tourism,” or the silence of a little girl at sea? 

Yes, right, this is the very PS MP who sent an SMS message wth a picture of his phallus by cellphone and who likes to hang around the yellow press with his scandals made up or real. Yes, this is the MP who claimed a while back that Islam was a Trojan Horse invading Europe and that homosexuals, lesbians and Somalis should be relocated to the Åland Islands.

Let’s now ask the dead girl with the pink dress at sea below what she thinks about PS MP Hakkarainen’s claims.

Dead silence.

Näyttökuva 2015-5-7 kello 8.54.46

 

On the left PS MP Teivo Hakkarainen’s election campaign claiming that he’ll get migrants to adapt or leave and that he’s against so-called “asylum tourism.” Next to this PS MP is a dead girls with a pink dress, or one of these so-called “asylum tourists.”

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Gareth Rice: Finland – welcome to the Ostrich Nation

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Gareth Rice*

The political, economic and social situation in Finland remains perplexing. Finns have been told for so long how good they have it, that they now refuse to believe anything to the contrary.

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Read original posting here.

Once heralded for balancing a womb-to-tomb welfare state with a competitive economy, Finland hasn’t had it easy of late. The small Nordic country with a population of just over 5 million has struggled with four years of policy stagnation and a bickering coalition government, which has been mired in three years of economic recession. Multinational nails were hammered into the Finnish national confidence when, in 2013, Nokia’s mobile phone business was bought over by Microsoft Mobile, the new subsidiary of the software giant Microsoft. Today, Finland needs to make some far-reaching changes if it is to retain the best parts of its former economic glory. The 2015 national election results may exacerbate existing problems rather than provide solutions.

Continue reading “Gareth Rice: Finland – welcome to the Ostrich Nation”

The ballot box in Finland has shown a very different picture of PS support than opinion polls

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The interesting matter to watch on election day is how well the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* will do and will it succeed in capturing undecided votes, which amount to about 40%, according to some predictions.

There is another matter that baffles some observers as well about the today’s election: Why does the PS continue to be the closet darling of the Finnish media even if the ballot box has shown different?

Näyttökuva 2015-4-18 kello 11.04.05

The top 10 anti-immigration and anti-cultural diversity MPs seeking reelection on Sunday are (top to bottom left to right): Timo Soini (PS), James Hirvisaari (Muutos 2011), Juho Eerola (PS), Teuvo Hakkarainen (PS), Pia Kauma (NCP), Päivi Räsänen (KD), Olli Immonen (PS), Maria Lohela (PS), Tom Packalén (PS) and Maria Tolppanen (PS). Don’t vote for these candidates because they are hazardous to migrants, minorities, Finns and Finland.

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Politicians who fuel and support opportunistically segregation in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Tanja Hartonen-Pulkka is a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* candidate in April’s parliamentary elections. Last year she was noticed by Migrant Tales for all the wrong reasons. Hartonen-Pulkka lives in Mäntyharju, a small town in Eastern Finland with a population of 6,200 people that has a handful of foreign residents. She claimed in fall that at the present rate, white Finns will become a minority in this country. 

Hartonen-Pulkka’s anti-immigration rhetoric hasn’t ended even if she got her fingers burned in August. In a campaign poster she hands you the usual anti-immigration rhetoric that is hostile to migrants and minorities living in Finland:

We must limit immigration. We have to get a handle on social welfare immigration and the cost of immigration has to be lowered. We must first create jobs in order that Finns have work before we can think about increasing the number of skilled migrants [to Finland].

Continue reading “Politicians who fuel and support opportunistically segregation in Finland”