Monday 28 July 2008

Timo Soini, an After-thought

In my post about Timo Soini, the only Catholic MP in Finland, I mentioned that I almost voted for him during the previous elections. I mean the city council elections, not precidential, although he did run for precidency too receiving 103,000 votes. I agreed with all of his values and missions except one, I am not a vehement opposer of the European Union.

Eventually I voted for another candidate (who wasn't elected) because Timo Soini, I thought, wasn't global enough. He is not multilingual, and I felt that he may not see the human race as one big family or not emphasise this enough.

After reading his political biography, Maisterisjätkä - meaning 'Master-dude', referring to both his academic dimension and modest suburban soul - my opinion of his global thinking has slightly shifted to the better. I will be following his political and personal life more acutely in the future. He combines many admirable traits, and the future of his political party, Perussuomalaiset (Traditional Finns), looks very bright indeed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So u finished the book! Congrats! Soini has a blog doesn't he?

Jason Lepojärvi said...

Yes, I did, and I will probably read it again. The benefit of the book is that those famous slogans of his are elaborated on -- proving that he's a populist in the true (positive) sense of the word and not just a fisherman of votes and apostle of discontent.

I did check the blog but he does not go very deep into issues in it. It remains more on the "slogan" level.