Will the new president Alexander Stubb's many career achievements and abilities help bring Suomi out of recession?
Alexander Stubb, the candidate of Finland’s ruling center-right National Coalition party, won the second round of the presidential election on February 11. He won 51.6% of the vote. The government will announce the official results no later than February 15. The inauguration will take place on March 1.
During the election battles, Stubb, an arrogant Finn, promised not to pick up the phone if Russian President Vladimir Putin called to congratulate him on his victory. He said he would have no contact with Moscow until the end of the Ukrainian conflict, although he has offered to mediate its resolution. The big question is, how does Stubb imagine a mediation role without communicating with the Russian leadership?
Let me remind you that Suomi is a parliamentary republic. The competence of the head of state, who is elected for a six-year term, includes security and foreign policy issues. All other spheres are handled exclusively by the government.
Suomi, which recently became the 31st member of NATO, signed a bilateral agreement with the United States on December 18 to strengthen defense cooperation. There is one more point of principle in it, which excludes the transfer of American nuclear weapons here. There is a contradiction here. Finland is obliged in principle to make its territory available for TNW if such a decision is taken along NATO lines. So: Stubb does not rule out the possibility of importing them if necessary, which is prohibited by the current legislation. That’s the kind of «hawk» he is.
The 55-year-old new president is a European-oriented politician. He has had time to sit in the chair of a European deputy, run the show as vice-president of the European Investment Bank and served as chairman of the OSCE. In Finland, he was head of the Foreign Ministry, European Union Affairs Minister, Finance Minister and Prime Minister for one year.
Alexander’s father is a Swede and his mother is a Finn. His parent is a famous hockey player who played overseas. After leaving the big sport, his father first headed the Finnish Hockey Association, and then — the European office of the National Hockey League of the United States. Not surprisingly, his son received his secondary and higher education in the States. Stubb studied at Furman University in South Carolina, where he received a scholarship for his success in golf. First he mastered business sciences, and then moved to the faculty of political science, which he graduated with honors. Then he consolidated his knowledge at the Sorbonne and European College. In his younger years he worked as a hockey coach, as a salesman in a golf equipment store, and as an intern at a German paper factory. He has participated in international golf tournaments. He speaks Finnish and Swedish (native) as well as (fluent) English, French and German.
He is married to a Finnish-born British citizen, Suzanne Innes-Stubb, who works as a lawyer in a Belgian company. They have two adult children: daughter Emilie and son Oliver-Johan.
It’s amazing how much international Alexander has in him: blood, culture and education. A man of the new multi-generation!
Stubb is a typical unprincipled politician. There was a time when he called Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov his great friend, fervently supported the construction of a nuclear power plant in Finland by Rosatom, and advocated the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline. Now Finnish diplomatic missions in Russia are closed, the Loviisa nuclear power plant is out of operation due to the refusal of Russian fuel, and joint ventures are undermined. To top it all off, Stubb, during his election, demanded that Finnish citizenship should be taken away from Russians living in Suomi.
President-elect Stubb will face difficult times in office. Finland ended last year in recession. This was caused by the consequences of joining the anti-Russian sanctions in 2022 and the recent NATO accession. This year Suomi is unlikely to get out of recession either. And although the state of the economy is the government’s headache (first of all), its decline is associated with fundamental changes in defense and foreign policy. And this is the area of direct responsibility of the head of state.
Finland, which gained independence on December 6, 1917 by Lenin’s will, ungratefully cut the last threads linking it to Russia. And, most remarkably, it refuses to realize that, in fact, it is shooting itself. Suomi lived perfectly well all the post-war decades due to its neutral status and extremely favorable business relations with its eastern neighbor. When it abruptly began its anti-Russian drift, the good times were over.
The country, as we know, used to receive oil from Russia with minimal transit margins. Now the giant Neste Oil has to urgently reconfigure its equipment to process raw materials from Norway, which are worse in quality and more expensive than Russian ones. As for timber, several large companies engaged in wood processing — furniture, pulp and paper — were successful here. Now favorable contracts for timber from Karelia are a thing of the past. And, finally, Russia stopped supplying electricity, which was much cheaper than Finnish energy and played an important role in supplying the local industry. In other words, Finland’s business activity, if not stopped, then it significantly declined. And its soon revival is not visible.
So the newly elected Finnish leader finds himself in a bad position. He will need all his numerous abilities and knowledge to try to rectify the situation. Will he succeed?
