It’s important to choose right candidates in municipal, county polls

Elections to all 310 municipalities and 21 counties will be held all over the country simultaneously on April 13.

The advance voting in the elections has already started on April 2 where 39,75,916 voters- 20,08,574 women and 19,67,342 men will exercise their rights of franchise to elect representatives for running the municipalities and health and welfare counties.

The elections is much significant this year when Finns are going through tight economic situation and various austerity measures taken by the four-party alliance government led by Kansallinen Kokoomus (National Coalition Party-NCP) hit the low-income people severely.

Amidst the increasing number of joblessness, the government cut various social security benefits.

It also brought various basic sectors including housing, heath and education under the austerity measures, which raised question about the role of Finland as a welfare state.

Experts viewed that the cuts targeting groups that are already struggling financially, such as housing benefit recipients, unemployed persons, family carers and students. The measures affected mostly the youths and the pensioners.

It is also very important for the immigrant people as the government has taken various anti-immigration measures since assuming the state power in June 2023.

Leaders of the conservative Kokoomus, radical rightist Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party), Suomenruotsalainenkansanpuolue (Swedish People’s Party of Finland-RKP) and the SuomenKristillisdemokraatit (Christian Democrats of Finland-CD) in the programmes of their government announced tougher immigration policy and already started to implement them.

The government by this time tightened the rules for acquiring Finnish residence permit while proposal submitted to the parliament to stiffen the criteria for Finnish Citizenship.

Such suicidal initiatives will not only hamper the economy and the internationalisation process, but also throw the country into at risk where birth rate is lower than death and it was historically low in 2024.

According to the Digital and Population Data Services Agency (DVV), about 260,000 immigrant people, which is nearly six percent of the total voters are eligible to cast votes in the elections this year.

Although the immigrants are normally reluctant to participate in the polls, the situation is changing gradually and now they need to participate actively in the polls to select their suitable representatives as disparity, discrimination and racism still prevail in many sections of society.

A progressive, anti-apartheid, non-racist leader with pro-European and pro-international frame of mind is very important for the country now and voters should keep it in mind while casting votes.

Following the changes to the international politics and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, it is the time to work unitedly and there is no option to divide the nation with populist sentiments to take the country ahead.

Before casting vote, immigrants should have a clear idea of ideologies of the political parties and candidates as some political parties do play a pro-immigrant role, a few of them play a dual role while a few openly take position against immigrants and internationalisation.

The parties that openly think of working together for the betterment of the country irrespective of native and immigrant backgrounds can take the country in the right direction.

People need to identify the parties that do populist politics or play dual games and taking various measures to tighten immigration law as they can never take the country in the right direction.

As working unitedly, irrespective of native and immigrant background, is important for the country, people should vote for progressive, pro-immigrant and pro-internationalisation parties and reject fundamentalists, zealots, and anti-immigrants.