{"id":13448,"date":"2012-02-07T10:48:39","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T15:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13448"},"modified":"2012-02-07T10:48:39","modified_gmt":"2012-02-07T15:48:39","slug":"finns-vote-to-stick-with-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/02\/07\/finns-vote-to-stick-with-the-eu\/","title":{"rendered":"Finns vote to stick with the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A summary of the recent presidential election results in Finland, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/newsbook\/2012\/02\/finlands-presidential-election?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fbl%2Fawinfortheeuro\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Economist<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Those who argued that Finland is fast becoming a Eurosceptic country that is against the country&#8217;s membership of the European single currency, the euro, have been proved wrong by its presidential election. The run-off on February 5th was contested between the two most pro-European candidates. Timo Soini, leader of the anti-euro True Finns, which took a spectacular 18% of the vote in the general election last April, was humiliatingly pushed out in the first round. The winner, Sauli Niinisto, a former centre-right finance minister, took 63% of the vote to 37% for the loser, Pekka Haavisto of the Greens (who was also the first openly gay candidate for the post).<\/p>\n<p>Mr Niinisto declares himself to be firmly in the pro-EU, pro-euro camp\u2014indeed, as finance minister he helped get the country into the euro in the first place. That matters because the Finnish presidency is more than a ceremonial post, especially in foreign policy, even if recent constitutional changes have made it weaker than it once was. Most power, especially in domestic issues, rests with the government, a cumbersome six-party coalition led by Jyrki Katainen, the conservative prime minister. The arrival in the presidential palace of Mr Niinisto, a fellow conservative, will strengthen Mr Katainen&#8217;s hand. Yet strains within the coalition, which was designed largely to keep the True Finns out of power, are likely to persist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A summary of the recent presidential election results in Finland, from The Economist: Those who argued that Finland is fast becoming a Eurosceptic country that is against the country&#8217;s membership of the European single currency, the euro, have been proved wrong by its presidential election. The run-off on February 5th was contested between the two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,84],"tags":[188,337,603],"class_list":["post-13448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-government","tag-electionwatch","tag-eu","tag-finland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3uU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13448"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13450,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13448\/revisions\/13450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}