She may have been a radical and a pacifist the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper
Posted in General on 27. Jul, 2010
“She may have been a radical and a pacifist”, the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper said, “but we are going to see a very different person as president, a model Social Democrat.”. This is despite the frisson of outrage still felt by a convention-bound country at Ms Halonen’s break with the Lutheran church, and her being a single mother.With Finland’s entry into the European Union, which has increased the influence of the prime minister, the presidency has lost some of its power. Barring a big surprise, the post will go to the current Foreign Minister, Tarja Halonen, after a run-off vote against a conservative, male opponent on 6 February.
In Sunday’s first round, 56-year-old Ms Halonen, a Social Democrat and former Sixties radical, captured 40 per cent of the vote, much further ahead ofEsko Aho, a former prime minister and leader of the opposition Centre party, than had been predicted. Mr Aho finished second with a disappointing 34.4 per cent, while three other female candidates, including the former defence minister Elisabeth Rehn, were eliminated.President Martti Ahtisaari decided not to run for a second six-year term after the Social Democrats refused to re-nominate him as their candidate without a primary.Ms Halonen’s success reflects the determination of Finland’s women, irrespective of their political affiliation, to elect one of their own as the country’s head of state.
Finland, the first European country to give women the right to vote, looks likely to have its first female president. Barring a big surprise, the post will go to the current Foreign Minister, Tarja Halonen, after a run-off vote against a conservative, male opponent on 6 February. Radmilo Bogdanovic, a senior member of Mr Milosevic’s Socialist Party and a former interior minister, played down the claim that the authorities were to blame.”The easiest thing for them to do is to call it state terrorism, but I see no way to link those things,” Mr Bogdanovic said.. Finland, the first European country to give women the right to vote, looks likely to have its first female president.
But for the private and independent media, the stories on the killing of Arkan, a powerful businessman with links to the criminal underworld, have been heading news bulletins.In the absence of any official word on the police investigation into the murder, speculation continued to be rife yesterday as to whether Raznatovic’s links to the underworld had motivated the killing or whether the regime of Mr Milosevic may have been involved.The first reaction to the murder from a member of the ruling élite was guarded. “It amounts to an official embargo on publicity on the case,” an analyst in Belgrade said, insisting on anonymity.This theory has been bolstered by the unusually thin coverage of Raznatovic’s assassination by the official media, the powerful Radio-Television of Serbia (RTS) and the pro-government Politika daily newspaper. RTS covered his death with one laconic sentence, and Politika’s coverage has been restrained. DNA samples can now be taken from a wider range of material and from much smaller samples,” he said.The forensic analysis will focus on blood-stained clothes recovered from the murder scene and a collection of weapons retrieved from the crowd.The killing of PC Blakelock is one of Britain’s most high-profile unsolved murder cases..