Sweet scent of scandal
Thursday, May 15, 2008 7:05 PM by lauranen
There has been yet another media storm brewing in Finland this week: to the shock and horror of the nation, it was revealed that Finnish MP's are failing to declare the origins of their campaign contributions (which is deemed illegal by the Finnish law, yet the violation of this law carries no sanctions).
The man in the eye of the storm is Timo Kalli of the Centre Party, but it's not an isolated case - apparently the MPs are protecting the anonymity of their contributors left, right and centre. Obviously, mostly on the right though: a headline from Helsingin Sanomat (link article in Finnish) confirms that "the large bourgeous parties" have the most non-disclosed contributors.
In the past few years, Finland has come out on the top-end in the world-wide (anti?-)corruption survey orchestrated by Transparency International, 'the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption' as their website informs us.
It would probably take several decades, if not centuries for the the level of corruption in Finland to catch up with the culture of corruption in the poverty-ridden countries of the third world, our faithful Eastern neighbour Russia, or even in my current home country of Ireland, Finland has started a slow slide down a slippery slope on this one.
A story from Helsingin Sanomat from September 2007 points out the following:
Although Finland was again deemed to be one of the least-corrupt countries, Transparency International said that the country’s record has been somewhat blemished as a consequence of some bribery scandals that have surfaced in recent years.In the light of the above quote, I wonder if the week's 'revelations' are just a prelude to exhaustive journalistic investigations, where journalists will trawl through endless piles of the parliament voting records and suchlike to discover the faintest sign of an MP taking a stance that could be seen favouring the very contributors they tried to keep in the shadows.
Actually, publicity can have an effect on the results, as perceived corruption levels are assessed primarily by business executives in the countries concerned. The interviewees themselves do not necessarily have any experience of their own with respect to bribery.
The good news is that if a Finnish politician would ever be even publically suspected of taking bribes, they would probably not make it back to the parliament on the next round. To semi-quote my old Italian friend Davide, "In Ireland...? This would neevver haaaappen." Irish voters are like lovesick girls with their politicians, just can't kick the pricks out in the hope that they will make up for all their bad deeds, and love and look after them forever.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about the Irish politics and am just repeating what I have heard being said. The allegory is my own though, but not a very original at that.
The evening-edition tabloids and party-biased local papers have of course always existed in the Finnish media, but in general the Finnish journos seem to congratulate themselves for practising good journalist ethics and being generally less trashy than their Central European and British counterparts. However, reading the Helsingin Sanomat recently, the sweet scent of scandal
I'm all for this kind of increase in international media attention. What happens in Finland doesn't necessarily stay in Finland anymore, which in turn increases transparency. Media might scandalise these things to some extent, I'm sure the politicians will try and play the whole thing down, and the critical media reader will be able to find a comfortable middle ground. No-one wants their news ready-chewed, and the educated receiver has to accept partial responsibility of the message.
I'll be following the story from the sidelines, and half-hoping it will plunge out some dirt that will end up on Guardian Online or even the RTE website. I don't even care if the bad news don't travel that far - I have Transparent International on speed dial anyways. seems to creep also on the pages of the high-brown HS, where it is likely to catch the eye of the international media vultures.
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