Presidential candidate Pekka Haavisto (green) challenged Alexander Stubb's (kok) view that Finland would be among the ten closest partners of the United States.
The coalition presidential candidate Alexander Stubb softened his claim about the closeness of the relationship between Finland and the United States a little during Ilta-Sanomi's presidential election exam on Tuesday.
“Perhaps it can be narrowed down a bit and say that the Nordic countries are at least among the top ten, but Finland is very important there,” Stubb stated.
Stubb has stated, for example, on Wednesday of last week in MTV's presidential election test, that Finland is one of the ten most important strategic partners of the United States.
However, in the IS exam, Stubb stated that the previous claim was not an exaggeration at all. According to him, for example, Finland would not have achieved the DCA defense cooperation agreement with the United States or its NATO membership so quickly if it had not been a close partner to the United States.
The greens endorsed by the presidential candidate of the electoral association Pekka Haavisto challenged this view in Tuesday's IS exam.
“We ourselves should not register that we are on really good terms with someone. Let's let them tell if we're in the top ten,” Haavisto stated.
“The USA has quite a lot of very central partners, I'm not quite sure that we are among the ten,” Haavisto gave his own assessment.
Haavisto listed Mexico, Japan and Taiwan as the countries closest to Finland.
Haavisto also highlighted his own contribution to the proposal presented by Stubb in the MTV exam, according to which Finland should chair the European Security and Cooperation Organization OSCE in 2025, the NATO summit in 2026 or 2027 and apply to become a member of the UN Security Council for the period 2029–2030.
“The chairmanship of the OSCE was our government's decision and I did the field work at the time to convince all the members of the OSCE,” Haavisto reminded.
The OSCE elected Finland as its chairman for 2025 in 2021, when Haavisto served as foreign minister.
Haavisto commented on the NATO summit by stating that Turkey has also been interested in the task and that this could create a competitive situation.
“It was also decided to apply for UN Security Council status during the previous government,” Haavisto continued.
The effort is also recorded Petteri Orpon (kok) to the government's government program.
Stubbs commented on Haavisto's advances by stating that getting the OSCE chairmanship in the previous government term was an excellent thing.
“Hopefully it will be successful,” commented Stubb.
Regarding the UN Security Council, Stubb reminded that the situation is currently good: Finland has not yet had any competitors for the position.
Haavisto also slightly criticizes Stubb's way of talking about the next president as “NATO president”
“It's too narrow a definition, especially of the president's role,” Haavisto said and reminded that there is a world outside of NATO as well. For example, he brought up the conflict in the Middle East.
Also the president Sauli Niinistö has repeatedly pointed out that he does not like the term in question.
“Finland has not changed for any reason. I have never heard, for example, that in Norway there is talk of NATO-Norway or the NATO king,” Niinistö said to Ilta-Sanomie in the interview two weeks ago.
Bigger there was hardly any debate between the candidates in the debate sections of the Ilta-Sanomie exam.
“In my opinion, it's not worth it to force people to file for divorce”, Stubb explained why he didn't challenge Haavisto more strongly.
According to Stubb, the fact that the candidates are able to have a civilized conversation with each other is an advantage of Finnish democracy. He reminded that, for example, the same would not necessarily be possible in the United States.
Read more: What's wrong with the NATO president?
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