Orpo Cabinet

The Orpo Cabinet is the 77th government of Finland. It was formed following the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election and succeeds the Marin Cabinet led by the Social Democrats and was formally appointed by President Sauli Niinistö on 20 June 2023. The cabinet is headed by Petteri Orpo and is a coalition between the National Coalition Party, Finns Party, the Swedish People's Party, and the Christian Democrats.

Ministers
Out of the total 19 ministerial posts, eight ministers are from the National Coalition, seven from the Finns, three from the Swedish People's Party, and one from the Christian Democrats.


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Program
Under the coalition deal, the Government has plans to tighten the rules for getting permanent residence and citizenship. Orpo Cabinet is aiming for 100,000 new people to become part of the workforce through, among other things, social security reforms and labor market reforms. The goal is, for example, to reduce the power of trade unions. The government increases funding for research and development and plans investments in rail traffic. In addition, the program aims to tighten Finland's criminal policy.

Riikka Purra, the chair of the Finns Party, justified the party's joining the coalition government by saying that the government program tightens immigration policy and changes Finland's climate policy to be more realistic. Anna-Maja Henriksson, chair of the Swedish People's Party, emphasized that the government will not weaken the position of the Swedish language in Finland. During the government program negotiations, the Swedish People's Party was at odds with the Finns Party on many issues, and Henriksson admitted that it is surprising that the party ended up in the same government as the Finns Party.

Junnila's resignation
On 27 June 2023, Green League, Left Alliance, and Social Democratic Party decided to propose a vote of no confidence against Vilhelm Junnila due to his alleged connections to far-right movements. On 28 June, the Centre Party announced their support for the vote of no confidence. Ahead of the vote, the leader of the Swedish People's Party Anna-Maja Henriksson suggested that Finns Party could replace Junnila with another person. The suggestion was declined by Riikka Purra, the leader of Finns Party, who threatened to take down the government, if Junnila failed to pass the vote.

In the confidence vote held by the parliament on 28 June, 95 Members of Parliament voted in favor of confidence for Junnila, while 86 voted against. Three MPs abstained from voting, and 15 were absent. The vote created divisions within the government, as seven MPs of the government coalition partner, the Swedish People's Party, voted against Junnila, and three abstained. Purra commented afterwards that the Swedish People's Party's decision to vote against their minister had "wounded the government" and that similar conduct could not continue in the future.

After the vote, there were further controversies on Junnila's past actions, including his past motion that Finland should promote contraception and "climate abortions" in "the underdeveloped societies of Africa" in order to battle curbing population growth and to enhance living conditions in Africa. The motion was deemed outrageous by yet another coalition partner, the Christian Democrats. On 30 June, Junnila announced that he would resign. He was succeeded by Wille Rydman on 6 July.

Controversies regarding the Great Replacement
In June 2023, it was widely noted in the media that Ministers Mari Rantanen, Leena Meri, Ville Tavio and Riikka Purra had repeatedly suggested in the Parliament and social media over the years that ethnic Finns are being demographically replaced in Finland through large-scale immigration. For example, Rantanen had often used hashtag #väestönvaihto (a term also used in Finnish for the Great Replacement) on Twitter. Ahead of the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election, she also wrote a candidate brief on her website in which she remarked on immigration: "we must not be so blue-eyed [a Finnish term for "naive"] that soon we will not be blue-eyed [a common feature of the ethnic Finnish people]".

According to researcher Niko Pyrhönen, the use of the term "väestönvaihto" has not been an accident, but a very conscious choice, as there are countless other expressions that could have been used to talk about population change. Finnish Security Intelligence Service considers that the Great Replacement is one of the noteworthy ideological motivations of far-right terrorism.

After heated discussion on social media, Purra, Meri and Rantanen stated on Twitter that they don't believe in conspiracy theories. Prime Minister Orpo commented the controversy by stating that using the word väestönvaihto was not enough to shake his confidence in any minister and instead called for more understanding towards one another.

Harassment of journalists
On 2 July 2023, Ida Erämaa, journalist of Iltalehti, published a column, in which she criticized Finns Party politicians for trying to prevent the media from writing about party's alleged connections to right-wing extremism. Afterwards, Erämaa was subjected to large-scale criticism and harassment on social media, with many comments focusing on Erämaa's persona and private life. Among the critics were certain politicians from the governing parties, including MPs Sebastian Tynkkynen, Wille Rydman and Tere Sammallahti. Erämaa was supported by the Union of Journalists in Finland and the Association of Editors, among others, who urged the politicians of the Finns Party and National Coalition Party to respect the freedom of the press.

On 6 July, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, released a statement in which she called on the Finnish authorities "to clearly condemn the smear campaign and any violent online threats made against journalist Ida Erämaa, to investigate the incident and provide any assistance she may need.”

Purra's writings
In July 2023, Purra's online comments written in 2008 prior to her political career to Jussi Halla-aho's Scripta blog emerged in the media. In the comments, using the username riikka, she frequently used derogatory language about immigrants, and wrote about a confrontation on a suburban train with a group of young immigrants: "If they gave me a gun, there'd be bodies on a commuter train, you see."

Purra originally refused to confirm whether she was behind the nickname and also said that she had no intention of resigning or regretting her past actions. However, after the comments were condemned by some representatives from the ruling parties and President Sauli Niinistö had called for the government to adopt a clear zero-tolerance stance on racism, Purra apologized for the comments. Soon after, Purra's newer writings from 2019 started to circulate in social media, in which she referred to women in burqa as "unrecognizable black sacks" in context of criticizing the clothing practice as dehumanizing. Prime Minister Orpo called an excerpt from the writings unacceptable, but considered that Purra's earlier apology was enough. Orpo later clarified that he considers the writings to advocate for women's rights.

By 13 July 2023, all opposition parties had demanded that Speaker of the Parliament Jussi Halla-aho would recall parliament from summer break to hold a vote of confidence in Purra. On 15 July, Halla-aho responded by stating that the matter wasn't urgent enough to recall parliament.

According to a survey conducted in between 14 and 19 July 2023, 47% thought that Purra should resign, while 40% thought that she shouldn't.

Opinion polling
In June 2023, 49% of Finns predicted that the government would not be able to finish its four-year term, while 28% predicted that it would. In July 2023, the percentage of those who predicted that the government would not be able to finish its term rose to 56%, while 23% thought that it would. Furthermore, 32% thought that the government should resign immediately, while 52% thought that it shouldn't.

According to a survey conducted in August 2023, 23.6% of Finns were satisfied with the activities of the Orpo Cabinet, while 61.7% were not.

Despite the above-mentioned opinion polls, the support of the two largest government parties, the National Coalition Party and the Finns Party, has remained stable after the elections. For example, in Yle's poll in February 2024, the National Coalition was the most popular with 22.4 percent support, the Social Democrats the second most popular with 20.4 percent support, and the Finns Party the third most popular with 20.0 percent support. This is considered a sign that the opposition is unable to offer a decent alternative to the government's policy.