by Sven Triloqvist
Sun Mar 30th, 2008 at 08:09:15 AM EST
The Finnish foreign minister Ilkka `Ike' Kanerva (National Coalition party) is in deep excrement. He is but one of a large number of examples of politicians and leaders both historical and current who believe that their private behaviour is of no concern to those whom they claim to represent - i.e. us.
I'll get into the gory details down the page, but in brief our foreign minister appears to be obsessed by female on-the-make `models' with large bosoms and trash-glam make-up, who inhabit the wannabe celebrity F-list. The obsession appears to be limited to reciprocated bombardment by SMS. However this bombardment appears to take place on government mobile phones during government time. One can only hope that the government mobile service package is one of those `1000 text messages a month for free' deals. And since the target of Ike's obsession has a declared annual income over several years of only a few hundred euros, one hopes she has a cheap mobile deal also. It would help her to keep on buying the expensive shoes and clothes and holidays abroad that she admits are the mainstay of her life in abject poverty.
Elected representatives are, of course, entitled to the same privacy as any citizen, providing their behaviour befits the position we have bestowed upon them. But the power that we give them to act on our behalf, not to mention their salaries, benefits and perks, bring with them special responsibilities that are not applicable to private citizens. We know, for instance, that they are privy to information that might harm our society if it were known outside our society. We trust this information with them (not knowing what it is) because we understand it as a necessary part of nation management. However we also expect that, unlike a private citizen, they will protect such information - with their life if need be, and certainly at the expense of their private life.
Neither do we tolerate hypocrisy. We expect what is said by our leaders as an article of belief to be fairly consistent with their behaviour - even if we disagree with that article of belief. We citizens know that political honesty is not always possible. We know, for instance, full well that some of our politicians have smoked dope when they were young or done other things in youth that might not sit well with the electorate. We allow them to dissemble or avoid the questions - if you live in a glass house....etc
We the citizens also understand that the desire for power is often linked with poor social skills. But we do expect our politicians to comport themselves in public showings in a way in which we can be proud of them. We expect them to `act' - to put on a good show on our behalf. We also expect them to be as incorruptible as possible, and certainly not to benefit personally, although we know they do sometimes.
We have given them plenty of opportunity to abuse their positions if they wish, because we'd rather these politicians have all the means at hand to deal with the problems of society that the rest of us would find insufferably tedious.
But all these opportunities come with the threat of our ultimate sanction - the Fourth Estate. The media are our window of transparency when sticky political fingers reach into the jar of these opportunities. We tolerate, and then, when our tolerance is abused, we rap knuckles. And the higher up the ladder you go as a politician, the harder we rap. And at the top pf the ladder Foreign Ministers not only have to keep out of the cookie jar - if they are found anywhere near it, then sharia law applies.
Thus I present the reasons why the Finnish foreign minister is due for the chop:
Update [2008-4-1 2:14:26 by Sven Triloqvist]: Finnish Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva was fired this morning April 1st.
The content of some of his text messages will be revealed next Wednesday in the long-established Finnish gossip magazine `Hymy' (Smile). The magazine acquired these text messages from the object of Ike's desire, `exotic dancer' Johanna Tukiainen. She sold them to the magazine - probably for a large sum, as the penalty alone for reneging on the contract was 10.000 €. And it was she who originally made known the existence of the text exchanges to the media before Hymy made its exclusive offer. Kanerva thus could hardly have expected that his e-passion would remain secret when the other party was an intellectually-challenged fame seeker with no visible means of support except DD.
The reason why he should not be surprised is that this was déja-vu all over again, in those immortal words of Yogi Berra (or was it Louis Mayer?). Kanerva had an identical experience 5 years ago with another `exotic dancer' Marika Fingerroos (You'll love this video).
The Fingerroos in the cookie jar affair also featured SMS bombardment by Kanerva, with the exchanges then leaked in a bid for celebrity by the `dancer' through a Helsinki PR agency. The messages were not pretty and they would certainly not be acceptable - as Kanerva admits about his current exchanges - "to be read out in a Sunday School". Hardly acceptable to be read out anywhere except in the annals of Learned Behaviour Disorders patient files IMHO.
Kanerva was not then FM. He got away with it in spite of widespread public condemnation especially from women politicians. He promised then, solemnly and publicly, that he would never do it again. And now he has. He has to go, and he will. He has a behavioural problem that needs to be treated. He has a problem that deeply affects his performance and the perception of that performance on the international stage. Ilkka Kanerva is a threat to the security of the Finnish nation.
He has just absconded from an important Baltic forum in Estonia at which he was meant to speak and take part in an important FM-level panel discussion. He did turn up (late) for an official dinner of the Estonian president with his common-law wife, but then disappeared before the conference.
How has he survived this far? This is the interesting bit: media culture professor Mikko Lehtinen suggests today that Kanerva is being protected by the `Hyvä-veli' (good brother) system. That is, his political pals are covering for him. Even our divorced PM Matti Vanhanen (Center Party) is covering for him. No wonder - the PM just came out of a very public court case in which he tried to punish a former lover that he met in an Internet chat (though he claimed they bumped into each other in a supermarket) and who, after the PM unceremoniously dumped her by SMS, wrote a book which detailed some of their private life over several months. He might have got away with it had in not been for the fact that he appeared at official engagements with her, thus making the relationship of public interest.
Kanerva is toast. I have refrained from publishing the gory pictures, but Tukiainen's model book is here if you want to know what all this fuss is about. The media have focused rather more on unflattering photos of her.
