Finnish PM faces dwindling options to avoid election

Bloomberg

Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipila could face a tight squeeze to avoid a snap election after the biggest opposition parties quickly ruled out giving him any help in the current political impasse. Sipila put a new election into play on Monday after he and the National Coalition dumped their junior coalition partner, The Finns, in a bid to find a new majority in parliament. He was met with a cold shoulder from the biggest opposition groups: the Social Democrats and the Greens. The Left Alliance had been calling for a fresh vote since the weekend.
That leaves the smaller Swedish People’s Party and the Christian Democrats as alternatives, which would only produce a very narrow majority and provide a weak mandate for Sipila to complete key legislation just halfway through his four-year term. While Sipila has managed to turn the economy around, his party’s support has been weighed down by scandals and unpopular decisions such as forcing through cuts in labor costs.
But Sipila played down the public rejection from most of the opposition, saying party leaders have been more “soft-spoken” in private. “Finnish party leaders and parliamentary groups are interested in bearing responsibility,” he told reporters at his residence in Helsinki late Monday. “We’ll start the process” of forming a new ruling coalition “with our options open,” he said.
The premier is reluctant to call a new election, with the most recent Yle poll showing his Center Party with backing of 18.4% , about 3% points below its 2015 election result. National Coalition is up at 20.5%, while the Finns have lost almost half its backing with just 9% support in the Yle poll. Erkka Railo, political scientist at the University of Turku, said the Center Party and the National Coalition will probably demand that their social and health-care and municipal reform agenda be accepted by their new partners.