Prime Minister and Centre Party chair Juha Sipilä said on Sunday night that he plans to seek re-election as party leader during a national convention in June.
Speaking during the party’s election night vigil for presidential candidate Matti Vanhanen, Sipilä said that he had been encouraged by party faithful to seek re-election despite Vanhanen’s poor showing in Sunday’s poll.
Vanhanen, a former Centre Party leader and Prime Minister, managed to secure just 4.1 percent of the vote in response to the crushing 62.7 percent posted by incumbent Sauli Niinistö.
Vanhanen also failed to pose a challenge to long-term politico Paavo Väyrynen, who polled at 6.2 percent on Sunday. Väyrynen left the Centre in a pique after being denied a ministerial post and formed the Citizens’ Party. However he contested the presidential election as an independent candidate backed by a voters’ association.
Sipilä told Yle that he had received a great deal of feedback from people about a possible connection between Vanhanen’s performance and his prospects for continuing as party chair, with most people saying he should seek re-election.
So far, no one else has announced a candidacy to head up the party ahead of general elections due in 2019.
SDP downplays result significance
Meanwhile head of the Social Democratic Party Antti Rinne, also sought to minimise the outcome of the election for the party, describing the poll as “bizarre”.
He did not directly respond to questions about whether or not he was disappointed in candidate Tuula Haatainen’s 3.3 percent polling. It was an especially galling outcome for Social Democrats, who’d held the presidency for thirty years from 1982 until 2012, but recorded their worst-ever total in a presidential election on Sunday.
“This has been a very interesting and bizarre election. Niinistö started off with 80 percent support and that strong backing lasted a long time. So certainly from the perspective of all the political parties this has been an odd election, except for Niinistö and his backup singers, the National Coalition Party,” Rinne said.
The SDP leader was referring to the fact that Niinistö did not contest the election as an NCP candidate, but as an independent nominated by a voters’ association. However the party did not field another candidate but declared its support for the incumbent as did the Christian Democrats. Campaign funding filings also indicated that Niinistö attracted big-ticket donors, who likely had ties to the business-friendly NCP.
Rinne meanwhile said that he was looking to the future with a positive mindset, specifically toward provincial elections expected to be held in autumn 2018 and parliamentary elections in 2019.
