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Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s visit to a nightclub over the weekend has fired up her critics.
While it didn’t break any formal pandemic rules, Marin’s decision to hit the town with friends on Saturday night came after aides informed her a cabinet colleague, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, tested positive for COVID-19.
Under Finland’s current rules, doubly vaccinated citizens like Marin don’t have to isolate if a contact tests positive, meaning the prime minister was formally allowed to socialize.
But as pictures of Marin in Butchers, a club in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, began to circulate Sunday and Monday, opposition lawmakers said it showed a lack of judgment not to voluntarily isolate until tests turned up negative.
“Of course [Marin’s behavior] hasn’t been smart — it’s been irresponsible,” said Mia Laiho, a lawmaker with the opposition National Coalition Party, who sits on the Finnish parliament’s health committee.
Marin initially sought to deflect the criticism by saying she had followed all relevant rules, and that a message sent by officials late Saturday telling ministers to isolate as a precaution had not reached her until Sunday morning — at which point she had isolated and taken a test, which came back negative.
Marin’s tone later changed, however, and she apologized for her actions.
“I should have used better judgment and also checked the instructions I received,” she said. “I am sorry that I did not understand this.”
Analysts said Marin’s ability, or lack thereof, to sense and react to public and media opinion is likely to remain in sharp focus.
“This is about how people and the media see this rather than whether she followed all the rules,” Göran Djupsund, professor emeritus in political science at Finland’s Åbo Akademi, told Finnish national broadcaster Yle. “To stay out was a poor call by both her and her advisers,” Djupsund said.
This isn’t the first time Marin’s judgment has been questioned. In May, she was found to have spent a monthly €845 on catering at her official residence. While she didn’t appear to have broken any formal rules then either, the issue led to days of negative media coverage.
Marin can ill afford to lose further voter confidence, with the Social Democratic Party she has led since 2019 already laboring in recent opinion polls.
While the next parliamentary election in Finland isn’t due until 2023, Marin’s coalition has shown signs of instability before — and narrowly avoided collapse in April — meaning a challenge to her leadership before then cannot be ruled out.
Source: Politico
