Report about the situation in Finland by Marxist Workers’ League for the International Camp of EEK, with delegations from Greece, Turkey, Poland, Russia, Finland, South Africa, France USA and England.
In Finland, we had elections couple of months ago, and same processes happened there like elsewhere in Europe. The ”winner”, Social Democratic party got only 17,7% of the votes. That means bankrupcy of liberals, concervaties and social democrats. We have a government of losers! Four years of reactionary government was not good reason to give Left Alliance a glorious win. Left Alliance was able to get a little benefit comparing to the previous election results. Only party that got a big win, was proto-fascists. In spite of their split, they got 17,5% of the votes, which is only 0,2% less than Social Democrats.
New government continues privatizations by selling the state property, even though state can nowadays borrow money with negative interest, as previous government could have done.
State gives 3 billion euros to company subsidies every year. Mainly it goes to export industry, large companies. Despite of critique to this before the elections by Social Democrates and the Left Alliance, new government has not indicated to be willing to touch these subsidies.
New government is perceived as leftist with Social Democrats and Left Alliance. But there is also Center party, Greens and The Swedish People’s party. They have promised to pull out all the reactionary labor laws of the previous government, even though the party that launched it, The Center, is in this government as well. These are not concrete promises. Center party deputies have been assigned as financial and economic affairs ministers.
Abolishing ”competitiveness enhancement agreement” is painfully slow. This agreement is about lenghtening of working hours without pay, cut holiday pay in public sector ex cetera. It also turned out, that last government gave companies relief on health and pension payments, and this was based on false calculations about the effects that Competitivenes Enhancing Agreement would have on economy.
-Last governments decision to spend 10 billion € to buy new fighterplanes def forces still stands. These are of course attacking weapons. Finland has special relationship with Nato. It is not a member, because of the vast disapproval of Nato by the people (about 80% is against).
Finnish bourgeoisie has nevertheless made this ”Host country agreement”, which basically means that Nato can invite themselves in whenever they please. Usually they do it few times every year… and then there is military practicings of land and naval forces. Last time it was practice of forces of all of the Fennoscandia, which consists of Finland, Sweden and Norway. The air operations command centre was in Rovaniemi, Finland. Finland has taken air defence of Baltic Sea and Baltic countries as it’s responsibility. This all is to get prepared for a war against Russia.
Far-right is preparing it’s forces also in other than electoral fields. This summer they gathered in camps, where they practiced shooting. As targets they used pictures of leftist politicians. In this action participated legal and illegal organizations, also True Finns – who are in the parliament. So fascists prepare seriously for real fights on the streets.
During previous government, mass movement was growing. Many fights and demonstrations came successful. After many many years, there was a general strike. Now the expectations of the masses are high, but at the same time they want to give time to the new govenment to show their real plans.
One-thing movements can be steered to progress into subjects of political change. Nowadays, something that starts with a small demand, will soon have long list of demands. Yellow Vests, that started as a protest to Macron’s fuel tax rise, is not as far as it would seem from Greta Thundbergs environmental activism, since both are essentially against capitalism. Our small organization participates on this one-thing-movements and organizes discussion events as well as takes part in demonstrations.
