Finnish Right Wins Decisive Victory
Finland’s left-liberal, incumbent prime minister and her Social Democratic Party (SDP) suffered a defeat in Sunday’s national parliamentary election, as the national vote tally revealed the country’s establishment center-right party to have won a razor-thin victory over the national-conservative Finns Party.
With nearly 100% of votes counted in Finland’s parliamentary election, the National Coalition Party (NCP) won by the narrowest of margins, securing 20.8%, barely ahead of the Finns Party, which—with 20.1% of the vote—achieved its best result since becoming a party. The SDP, headed by Prime Minister Sanna Marin, came in third place with approximately 19.9% of the vote.
Once confirmed, the provisional results will see the NCP take hold of 48 seats in Finland’s 200-seat unicameral legislature, an increase of 10 MPs, while the Finns Party will have 46 MPs sitting in the incoming assembly–seven more than it had in the outgoing parliament. The SDP is set to occupy 43 seats in the new chamber, up from 40.
“This was a big win,” Petteri Orpo, the leader of the NCP, told supporters after most votes had been tallied. “Our message has gotten through, the support is there, and Finns believe in the National Coalition Party.”
Riikka Purra, the Finns Party leader, called it “an excellent result.”
Marin, in her concession speech, congratulated her political opponents and called the SDP’s third-place result a “really good achievement.”
“Democracy has spoken, the Finnish people have cast their vote, and the celebration of democracy is always a wonderful thing. I am grateful that our support has increased and that we look set to receive more mandates,” she added.
The NCP leader, who during the campaign did not rule out working with any party, is now tasked with forming a coalition government. Finnish political analysts have suggested that Orpo will likely seek first to include the Finns Party in his coalition. However, the NCP and Finns Party, with 94 seats between the two of them, would need one or more of the smaller parties to join the coalition to hold a majority in parliament. This could prove difficult given that the SDP, along with two members of its current five-party coalition—the Greens and the Left Alliance—have already ruled out working with the Finns Party.
Analysts also say that it is not outside of the realm of possibilities that NCP recruits Marin’s Social Democratic party as its primary coalition partner.
No Clear Victor in Bulgaria’s Fifth Election in Two Years
Exit polls and initial vote tallies in Sunday’s national parliamentary election in Bulgaria, the fifth of its kind to take place in the country in a matter of two years, have so far failed to reveal a clear and decisive winner.
The results of an initial exit poll indicated that the pro-Western, so-called reformist bloc, composed of Continuing the Change (PP) and Democratic Bulgaria (DB), had secured a narrow majority of 25.3%, defeating the establishment, center-right party GERB, which garnered 24.7% of the vote. However, another exit poll carried out some hours later, placed the latter party in first place with 26.2% of the vote, while the reformist bloc collected 24.6%.
As of the writing of this piece, with 25% of the national vote having been counted, the reformist coalition (PP-DB) led by former Prime Minister Kiril Petkov appears to be the likely winner of the election, having taken 24.3% of the vote compared to GERB’s 23.4%.
According to a report by Politico Europe, a clear victor is expected to emerge sometime on Monday after all the ballots of international voters are counted.
Exit polls and initial vote counts have revealed that other parties likely to enter parliament are the Bulgarian Socialist Party (8.5%), the liberal, primarily ethnic Turkish party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) (17.5), and Revival, a nationalist party sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin (13%).
Depending on the percentage of the vote they end up garnering, either Revival or DPS may end up playing a kingmaker role in the new parliament.
Montenegro Rids Itself of Communist Past; Future Remains Unclear
Former economic minister Jakov Milatović, of the liberal Europe Now! Movement (PES), won the historic run-off to Montenegro’s presidential election with 60% of the votes, defeating the incumbent social democratic president, Milo Đukanović, 40%, seen by many as the longest-lingering ghost of the country’s communist past.
Although Đukanović, who was dominating the Montenegrin political scene for over three decades as either president or prime minister, narrowly won the first round of voting last month, he simply had no chance facing a united opposition in the second. Seen as oligarchic, authoritarian, and corrupt to the core, defeating Đukanović’s DPS was the only goal that was able to bridge the gap between the second and third largest parties, the pro-West, liberal Europe Now! and the admittedly Russophile, Serb-nationalist Democratic Front (DF)—prompting the latter to back PES in the run-off.
While the presidential position is a largely ceremonial one, Sunday’s election still marked a symbolic step toward shredding Montenegro’s authoritarian past and moving forward into a future without the influence of the post-communist establishment. Furthermore, these results are viewed as important signs that could potentially predict the outcome of the next parliamentary election.
The opposition forces managed to defeat Đukanović’s socialists in the parliament back in 2020, but their coalition was short-lived, collapsing after two no-confidence votes. Currently, without any government, Montenegro is set to hold snap parliamentary elections in June, with much higher stakes. If they wish to get rid of DPS for good, PES and its allies must make sure that they will win with such a comfortable margin that’s enough to keep their government up and running this time.
While these results do herald a change in Montenegro’s political direction, not everyone is equally enthusiastic. Paradoxically, some fear the victory of Europe Now! could actually derail the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration. It’s true that Đukanović was no model democrat, but at least he was firmly pro-European (leading the country’s independence movement and negotiating NATO membership and EU candidacy). The same is true about Milatović and the PES, but certainly not the Serb-nationalist DF, whose place in the next government coalition is all but guaranteed after yesterday—which makes many think that Montenegro’s new president is just another Russian asset.
