The Government as a Culture-War Target | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 201

Summary

Sari Essayah — chair of the Christian Democrats and minister of agriculture and forestry in Petteri Orpo’s government — reviews the government’s bumpy start, the summer of scandal labelled a culture war, and the substantive politics buried underneath it.

The starting point: a misread voting list

The first section concerns a case in which Essayah and foreign minister Elina Valtonen were linked, in an Ilta-Sanomat story, to a budget motion tabled by Wilhelm Junnila. Essayah’s account of what happened is this: the vote was not the one the story presented it as — the paper had misread the voting lists, and the vote she and Valtonen took part in concerned support for the over-indebted. The motion itself concerned funding for the Veljesapu-Perinneyhdistys, an association operating under the veterans’ umbrella body Tammenlehvän Perinneliitto, and ministers Li Andersson, Krista Kiuru and Aino-Kaisa Pekonen had granted funding to the same budget line during the previous government’s term.

According to Essayah, the journalist asked neither minister for comment before publication. A correction appeared the following morning, not on the front page but at the foot of the article. An editor apologised — after Essayah rang the paper herself.

The episode does not go into the Junnila, Rydman or Lindtman cases beyond noting that they happened that week. Essayah’s own point is about procedure: once a story has been translated into the international press it stays alive, because corrections are not picked up with the same enthusiasm.

The diagnosis: culture war as a by-product of missing substance

Essayah’s explanation for the summer is structural rather than personal. Government work had not yet become concrete — no bills had been introduced and the first budget was still being drafted — so there was no political substance to get hold of, and the debate circled around it instead. Miettinen puts the same point later: the culture war is frustration at not being able to fight a political battle with the means an unremarkable programme provides.

Both treat “like-stalking” — working out who has liked whose posts and deriving chains of endorsement from it — as the illustration of where this ends. Essayah is careful to hold that the press should investigate backgrounds and assess critically; her claim is about care, not about the watchdog role. A clickbait headline is subject to the same journalistic principles as a printed story.

Agriculture and forestry

The portfolio suits her: over the two previous parliamentary terms the Christian Democrats were the only party to table an interpellation on agriculture. The substantive content concentrates on three things.

Income distribution along the food chain. Section 6.6 of the government programme shifts the emphasis from support packages and crisis funds towards the price paid for the product covering its cost. In Essayah’s phrase: the workman is worthy of his hire, and so is the farmer. Last year’s cost crisis made visible how unevenly the return is distributed within the chain.

Retail concentration. Finland has only a handful of grocery chains — Essayah calls it “a fairly oligopolistic market” — which leaves the producer in a weak negotiating position. REKO rings and direct farm sales are raised as partial routes around it; they work for some product groups and less well for meat that has to pass through an abattoir. The programme promises to ease permitting for farm-level and small abattoirs.

The alcohol compromise. Asked directly whether the eight per cent limit was a Christian Democrat blocking move, Essayah answers plainly. Other parties wanted wine in grocery shops; her argument for the limit is that if 75 per cent of alcohol sales move to the shops there is no longer a monopoly, and none could be defended to the Commission — and spirits would follow. The limit was drawn on two conditions: eight per cent and produced by fermentation, which leaves alcopop-type products outside. Miettinen, who lived in London for thirteen years, says he disagrees but recognises the argument.

EU influence and the restoration regulation

This is the episode at its most topical and also at its most clearly predictive: at the time of recording the restoration regulation was about to be voted on in the parliamentary plenary. Essayah’s picture is that the proposal has fallen in all three committees and that the EPP has decided it wants to defeat it; she says she intends to spend the following week meeting MEPs still weighing their position — Elsi Katainen among them — and estimates that Renew Europe will split roughly down the middle. What the plenary actually did is outside this episode.

The more general claim is procedural: Finland relies too heavily on the civil-service level. Real influence, in Essayah’s account, requires a minister on the move and personal meetings early enough — and alliances with other forested countries.

How the government machine works

Why portfolios are allocated after the programme. If the plots were divided in the opening rounds, everyone would arrange congenial matters for themselves and push the uncongenial onto others. So: programme first, portfolios second, and only then do the parties decide who fills them.

The half portfolio. Miettinen recalls that political journalist Marko Junkkari, on this same programme, judged the Christian Democrats unlikely to get more than one portfolio. Essayah counts the half — a youth, sport and physical activity portfolio for the final two years — as a successful negotiating outcome. The start is nonetheless heavy going: she is her party’s only minister.

Three portfolios at the education ministry is, she says, unprecedented and a measure of weight. Education was a sector not cut, and roughly €200 million of additional investment was made.

Assessments of the other leaders. On Orpo: a conciliatory style that does not take a position first is the leadership of this age — Miettinen says he had thought him too risk-averse but judges that this is exactly what suits a prime minister. On Purra: a demandingness and refusal to yield driven by pressure from her own base, but also a sensitivity and a capacity to listen. On Henriksson and the Swedish People’s Party: pragmatic, uncomplicated competence, and after the summer’s crisis meetings the Königstedt retreat mattered. Essayah’s own definition of a strong leader is servant leadership, not a patriarch banging the table.

A consensus that may be breaking

The broadest claim in the closing stretch is historical. The Finnish habit has been to absorb extremist movements into the mainstream — the far right before the wars, the far left after them — and to draw them into building the society. An American-style split into two camps would be a departure from that. Miettinen adds his own reading that the NATO process healed the left.

Both read the same thing from Helsingin Sanomat’s values map: on the economic-right axis the governing parties are “scattered but still bundled”, where the previous government’s spread was wider.

Social security: the episode’s strongest numerical argument

Essayah states that Finland has twice as many people on last-resort income support as Sweden. Because this is the safety net of last resort, the figure indicates on her reading that something in the system is badly wrong and that it is passivating. The answer is a single unified basic benefit that remains needs-based and conditional — not a citizen’s income — followed by reform of the housing allowance. She separates out those who are genuinely not fit for work: their place is not on the receiving end of employment administration contacts.

The wellbeing services counties did not get taxation powers. Essayah says hardly anyone was proposing them, but that the parties wanted the point written down. Health and social care reform needs repair — it has a structural defect — but the basic structure will not be dismantled immediately, because the counties have only just started.

The cost trajectory. Essayah corrects the headlines that spoke of €1.5 billion cut from health and social care: more than €4 billion is being added, and the €1.5 billion is taken off the cost trajectory that would otherwise materialise — which she puts at over €6 billion. Miettinen notes drily that this is economic-right vocabulary: not cuts but savings of citizens’ money. Essayah keeps the term.