Keys to Heaven

St. Peter and the keys to heaven.

This is one of the twelve apostles statues of Helsinki Cathedral.

Storm clouds provided a pretty good background for St. Peter.

Temptation

Mmmmmm.....

I have never tried to intentionally influence the animals that I have been photographing. In this case somebody had left the nuts and two squirrels fetched them one by one.

Fish

This monument must be pretty new as I don't remember seeing it at Vanhakaupunki during last year.

Campaigning

Campaining for the local elections of last week at Arabia district.

Several parties have a good reason to be happy after the local elections

• Conservative National Coalition Party is now for the first time the biggest party in Finland
• Populist True Finns are the biggest winners of the elections although with their 5% share they are no match for the big three parties (each >20%).
• Ex-environmental movement Green League became the biggest party outside of the big three (and second biggest in Helsinki)

The remaining big three parties Centre party and Social Democrats lost a lot of seats. It is a bit strange situation as both the leading government party and the biggest opposition party were on the losing side.

EDIT: We have just learned that the electronic voting pilot in three municipalities was a total fiasco. A few percentage of the votes were not validated by the voters who thought that they had already given their vote. The system failed before the really controversial parts of it were even used!

Cathedral in Pink

Helsinki Cathedral during a rainy evening.

Giving My Vote in the Local Elections

Candidates and their numbers are listed on the walls and all you need to do is write the number, get the paper stamped and put it inside a box.

Some municipalities are now piloting electronic voting. I’m totally against it as voting is the cornerstone of our society and it needs to be kept simple and understandable. How can you trust a voting system when they don’t even tell you how it works? In the good old system trust is based on thousands of people from different parties who are keeping an eye on each other. You can’t bribe them all. Even if there wouldn’t be any problems in the near future, the foundations of our society must be so strong that they can be trusted also during bad times.

Four years ago the turnout for the local elections (58.6%) was about the same as in the U.S presidential elections. This is considered alarmingly low in Finland. During the second round of the 2006 presidential elections 77.2% of the Finns voted. Today we have bad weather which means that a lot of people will stay at home.

Later it will be interesting to see today’s tv audience numbers: Are people more interested about local elections or tv show voting. Before midnight we will know who are eliminated from Idols and Big Brother and who are our local representatives for the next four years.

Local Elections on Sunday

I quickly grabbed some of the advertisements that have been in my mail.

Local elections are held tomorrow but somehow it seems like the politicians haven’t even started their campaigns yet. I guess we are doing very well in Helsinki and Finland as there really aren’t any major issus that people would be raving about. The global financial crisis hasn’t (yet) hit Finland in a big way and there would be little to do at local level anyway.

Nationwide there are three major parties social democrats (SDP), centre party (keskusta) and National Coalition party (kokoomus). They are getting closer and closer each other especially in their actions although their words may still reflect their traditional differences.

Centre party has little significance in big cities where Green League (vihreät) is much more popular. In addition there are still 3-4 other parties that are able to use some power and several smaller parties.

Some time ago they posted me a paper that says where I am supposed to vote. There is no need to register as a voter ever (atleast for native Finns). During the voting a piece of paper is given to me after they have checked who I am. I go to a booth and write the number of my candidate on the paper and then put the paper in a box.

It is also possible to vote before the actual elections in case you have something else to do during the election day.

I think the voting ends at 8pm and before I go to sleep we know the results. It’s the same for all kinds of elections held in Finland. Simple and efficient.

Fishing at Vanhankaupunginlahti

One of the many fishers at a place where river Vantaa meets Baltic Ocean.

Rush Hour

Rush hour in central Helsinki.

Pacius, Composer of the National Anthem

Statue of Pacius in Kaisaniemi.

German Fredrik Pacius is the composer of the Finnish national anthem although it is often mentioned that he was in a hurry and he just copied a German drinking song. In many ways he had a major role in the musical life of a nation that wasn’t independent yet.

Estonians also use the same melody without a repetition at the end. In many sports events it is actually the shorter Estonian anthem that is played for Finnish winners. Even when a few years ago Jukka Keskisalo became the European champion of 3000m steeple chase in neighbouring Sweden, they played the Estonian anthem for him. Many times the blue color of Finnish flag is also way too light and it has totally wrong dimensions. I guess Finns have been too polite to complain.