The contemporary Finnish political landscape was determined by the 2012 presidential elections. Sauli Niinisto became a new President of Finland; Niinisto is a representative of the right-center party “The National Coalition” which was the winner at the parliamentary elections in 2011. Niinisto won over Pekka Haavisto from the“Green” party (1).
The victory of Niinisto was persuasive but Timo Soini,
the leader of the right-populist nationalistic party “The True Finns”
(”Perussuomalaiset” in Finnish) also became one of the “lucky men” of the
elections. Soini received 9,4% of the voices and left the first elections tour
on January 24, 2012, having taken the 4th place (2). It was a
very serious result comparing to the result of the presidential elections in
2006 (3,4%). The main sensation of the parliamentary elections which took place
a year earlier was a grandiose success of “The True Finns”. The
nationalistic party got 19,1% of the electorate. The Centre Party's
Deputy Chairman Timo Kaunisto said that the elections results were a
catastrophe. He noted that the main reason of his party fiasco was the
increased dissatisfaction about the European Union in Finland (6).
