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Ten days after taking office, the new Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (53) has already lost his first cabinet member. Minister of Economic Affairs Vilhelm Junnila (41) of the right-wing populist party De Finnen announced his resignation on Friday following a scandal surrounding his contacts in the far-right scene and jokes about Nazi symbols.
Given the survival of the government and Finland’s reputation, he deemed it impossible to continue as minister satisfactorily, he said. However, he still enjoys the confidence of his party and faction. According to radio station Yle, Junnila is the shortest-serving minister in Finnish history.
The four-party coalition around Orpo’s conservative National Coalition Party and the Finns party was sworn in a week and a half ago. After that, Junnila’s connections with right-wing extremists came into the public eye. He narrowly survived a confidence vote in parliament on Wednesday, but the pressure on him and the government remained high. President Sauli Niinistö (74), who does not actually make such statements, described the situation as embarrassing for the government.
Criticism of Junnila included statements he made during the parliamentary elections in the spring. There he congratulated another candidate from his party on list 88, the same one he had in the 2019 election. The 88 is considered by neo-Nazis to be a number for “Heil Hitler”. Junnila is said to have joked about the song beforehand. He recently apologized for this on Facebook. Over the years he joked in a way that in retrospect seemed stupid and childish to him, he wrote, according to Yle. The entry is no longer online. (SDA)
Source: Blick
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
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