Finland's former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb and former Overseas Minister Pekka Haavisto are main a gaggle of 9 candidates working within the nation's presidential elections on Sunday.
The president, who’s elected for a six-year time period, has restricted powers. However he does lead international coverage along with the federal government, and that position has subsequently gained significance since Finland's jap neighbor Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Right here you’ll find brief profiles of the three most important candidates.
– Alexander Stubb, a former Prime Minister –
The 55-year-old conservative Stubb, Prime Minister of Finland from 2014 to 2015, has returned to politics after a number of years in academia to run for president, and is main the polls.
For the previous three years he has been director of the Florence College of Transnational Governance on the European College Institute in Italy, after dropping the race for the presidency of the European Fee in 2018.
He was elected Member of the European Parliament in 2004, turned Minister of Overseas Affairs in 2008 and later held the Finance and European Affairs portfolios.
In 2014, when he was prime minister, he got here beneath fireplace from the media for carrying shorts to a press convention on the scenario in Ukraine after which performing as a human dartboard at a theme park.
Based on Stubb himself, certainly one of his largest errors as prime minister was granting permission for the development of a nuclear energy plant along with the Russian state-owned firm Rosatom.
In 2015, after his social gathering got here second within the parliamentary elections, he moved to the position of finance minister.
He subsequently misplaced the social gathering management and in 2017 left the Finnish parliament to take up a place as vice chairman of the European Funding Financial institution.
Stubb, an avid triathlete, has suspended competitions to deal with the presidential race.
– Pekka Haavisto, NATO architect –
Former Overseas Minister Pekka Haavisto, a 65-year-old member of the Greens social gathering who’s working as an impartial, is without doubt one of the architects of Finland's NATO membership and is overseeing a historic coverage shift that ends a long time of navy independence.
A seasoned diplomat, Haavisto was baptized in battle decision when he was despatched to barter the discharge of a gaggle of Finns captured in Kuwait after the 1990 invasion of Iraq.
He later served as a United Nations diplomat and acted because the EU Particular Consultant to Sudan from 2005 to 2007, the place he contributed to the peace talks in Darfur.
He has run for president twice earlier than, in 2012 and 2018, dropping each instances to outgoing Conservative Get together President Sauli Niinisto.
Having served as a minister in 5 totally different governments, Haavisto, if elected, would develop into one of many few leaders of environmentalists in Europe.
Described as a workaholic, he’s usually characterised as assertive and typically impolite, anticipating his co-workers to stick to his diligent work ethic.
Haavisto is gay and is credited with serving to to extend openness and tolerance in Finland.
He’s also called an newbie DJ, beneath the identify DJ Pexi.
– Jussi Halla-aho, anti-immigration linguist –
Far-right Finns Get together candidate Jussi Halla-aho, 52, is in third place within the polls.
The present speaker of parliament, who’s light and wanting to be taught, doesn’t match the picture of a populist politician, however has the sturdy assist of his social gathering.
Halla-aho owes his controversial weblog Scripta, which he began in 2005, to his profession in politics, with which he criticized each the media and immigration.
The weblog and reader feedback have come beneath scrutiny within the media for his or her hyperlinks to racism and far-right ideology.
Weblog posts he wrote in 2008 attacking Somalis and Islam earned him a conviction for ethnic agitation and disrupting non secular worship.
In 2011, he was elected MP because the far-right Finns Get together grew from a minor participant to the third largest in parliament.
An extended-standing critic of Russia, he warned towards the development of the Nord Stream gasoline pipelines in 2019.
He’s firmly pro-Ukrainian; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded him a medal final 12 months.
Halla-aho, a former linguist with a doctorate in Previous Church Slavonic, speaks fluent Ukrainian and his language abilities received reward after he gave a speech within the Ukrainian parliament final November.
