it baffles us just as much as it does you that a literal beauty pageant has more integrity than the people running the country

what an absolute mess

(anyway i had to say SOMETHING and this is the closest thing i have to a public platform so here it goes, i guess)

i can't exactly sit here and say these people aren't representative of us, because they're literally elected representatives, but like my dad has always said, that's what a representative IS in the most literal sense, people like this are part of the population, and this is their representation

they already know they're going to lose the next election, that's why they're so brazen about all of this, they have nothing to lose, meanwhile they have everything to gain from just putting on turbo mode while they still can and not caring which bridges they burn on the way

just that, much of what this specific coalition government has done in the past 2 years has been absolutely unprecedented in its awfulness towards... really ANYONE who isn't a generationally wealthy citizen of the majority ethnicity, this incident being just the most recent instance of that

much of the criticism is extremely warranted and i'm, in a way, kind of glad to see the international image and myth of the progressive paradise/"happiest country on earth" erode a little so more people here actually have to confront the real issues and their own attitudes

many, MANY, people voted for the exact opposite of this, myself included, in the 2023 election i personally voted on the single issue of trying to keep this far-right party out of the coalition

this does NOT however mean finland doesn't have an issue with racism, because it absolutely does

2. they fell to 6th place in the 2025 local elections and have been polling 3rd/4th on the national level

and 3. the prime minister is so stiff about this because he has a once-in-a-lifetime chance at furthering his economic policy goals and hasn't let racist things done by the other party stop him

the approval rating of the government is one of the lowest we've had in the history of tracking it (only 38% already back in august)

yes, this is the second most popular party (as of the 2023 election) doing this, but

1. they have the lowest respect from outside their voterbase out of any party