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Roundup: Election winner underlines need to reach consensus over government program

Xinhua, April 20, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Center Party and the Green Party emerged as winners of Finnish parliamentary election as the votes were being counted in Finland late on Sunday.

Based on the counting results, the Center won 21.1 percent of the votes and got 49 out of the 200 seats, which further confirmed that centrist chairman Juha Sipila will be the new prime minister.

It was followed by the Finns Party, which got 38 seats, the National Coalition Party with 37 seats, and Social Democratic Party with 34 seats. The rest smaller parties shared a total of 42 seats.

The results were projected by national broadcaster YLE, based on an initial count of 99 percent of the vote by the election unit at the Finnish Ministry of Justice.

Election Day did not bring the composition of the next government any clearer. Negotiations are needed for the Center Party leader to gather enough partners to form a new government.

In early statements, all party leaders underlined their willingness to talk. The likely prime minister Sipila defined "the program and mutual trust" as the major prerequisites and said the election result was only the third component.

Asked why he did not give the election result higher importance, Sipila said that the ability to reach agreement was more important.

Among Sipila's major goals were to improve Finnish competitive edge, to bring balance to the economy, and to reduce bureaucracy.

According to Finnish Ministry of Justice, a total of 2,956,773 voters cast ballots, and the turnout reached 70 percent, slightly lower than in the previous parliamentary election four years ago.

The Center Party lost the previous election in 2011, with 15.8 percent of the votes and 35 seats. It later became the biggest opposition.

Sami Borg, an analyst at the national broadcaster Yle Television, noted that some polls had suggested the voter turnout would be larger. The fact that it did not increase seemed to show that the centrist victory was not quite as large as predicted, he noted. Endi