Presidential candidates Pekka Haavisto (Greens), Jussi Halla-aho (PS), Jutta Urpilainen (SDP) and Alexander Stubb (NCP) participated in an election debate organised by Helsingin Sanomat in Helsinki on 12 December 2023. Halla-aho and Stubb would uphold, Haavisto and Urpilainen remove the requirement that the president must be a native-born Finnish citizen. Halla-aho believes the requirement could be extended to also apply to cabinet ministers and members of parliament. (Markku Ulander – Lehtikuva)
- Next Article Helsinki police opens pre-trial inquiry into allegedly defamatory posts about Halla-aho
JUSSI HALLA-AHO, the presidential candidate of the Finns Party, writes on YLE’s voter guidance pages that the birthplace requirement imposed on the president should be extended also to cabinet ministers and members of parliament.
The public broadcasting company asked all presidential candidates whether the requirement that the president shall be a native-born Finnish citizen should be upheld.
Halla-aho was one of six candidates to answer yes. “It is important,” he elaborated, “that the president has roots deep in Finnish soil. The native-born requirement could well be extended also to cabinet ministers and members of parliament.”
Also in favour of upholding the requirement were Alexander Stubb (NCP), Olli Rehn (Centre), Sari Essayah (CD), Harry Harkimo (MN) and Mika Aaltola.
Li Andersson (LA), Pekka Haavisto (Greens) and Jutta Urpilainen (SDP) contrastively viewed that the requirement should be removed also for the president.
Urpilainen said Halla-aho’s proposal to instead extend the requirement is “shocking coming from a presidential candidate and appalling coming from the speaker of parliament”. She added that it would be dismal if anyone who did not receive citizenship at birth could never be deemed “sufficiently Finnish” to represent Finland.
“Finnishness is being committed and taking action to benefit Finland, defending its values and borders. You can settle down here even if your roots are elsewhere,” she wrote on X.
Helsingin Sanomat on Tuesday reminded that a handful of current members of parliament would not satisfy the requirement. Ben Zyskowicz (NCP), who was born to Polish parents in Helsinki in 1954, did not receive Finnish citizenship until the age of five, whereas Nasima Razmyar (SDP) is originally from Afghanistan and Bella Forsgrén (Greens) from Ethiopia.
Anne Berner (Centre), who served as minister of transport and communications in the cabinet of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä (Centre), did not apply for Finnish citizenship until she launched her parliamentary election campaign.
Forsgrén, who became a citizen at the age of three following her adoption to Finland, described Halla-aho’s proposal as non-inclusive and a form of “high-society racism” in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat on Wednesday.
“This does have quite a racist undertone. That birthplace alone would define a person’s possibilities to participate in society at a certain level,” she said. “It sort of creates the impression that a non-native-born Finn could be somehow untrustworthy and unpatriotic.”
Razmyar, in turn, estimated that any discussion about the eligibility to stand as a candidate in elections is fundamentally a discussion about “whether you have to be born as a Finn or whether you can become a Finn”.
“The expansion of the native-born requirement, as demanded by Halla-aho, is precisely the kind of ethnonationalism that the Finns Party has pledged to reject,” she wrote on X.
Pauli Rautiainen, an expert in constitutional law at the University of Eastern Finland, on Wednesday reminded on the social media platform that the requirement for members of parliament was ruled to be unconstitutional already in the 1980s.
“As the constitution prohibits imposing a native-born requirement on cabinet ministers, it analogously prohibits imposing the requirement on members of parliament,” he said.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
- Next Article Helsinki police opens pre-trial inquiry into allegedly defamatory posts about Halla-aho
Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
