Matti Vanhanen

Matti Taneli Vanhanen (pronunciation (help·info)) (born November 4 1955 in Jyväskylä) is the current Prime Minister of Finland, as well as Chairman of the Centre Party. In the second half of 2006 he was President of the European Council.

Career

Vanhanen was born in Jyväskylä, the son of the controversial professor Tatu Vanhanen, co-author of IQ and the Wealth of Nations, and Anni Tiihonen.

He has a university education in political science, having graduated as a Master of Social Sciences in 1989. In his youth he was chair of the Centre Party Youth League from 1980 to 1983. He also served as a member of Espoo city council from 1981 to 1984. Vanhanen is a journalist by profession, having worked as an editor of local newspaper Kehäsanomat 1985–1988 and editor-in-chief 1988–1991.

Vanhanen was elected as a member of Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) in 1991. As a member of Parliament he was interested in ecological issues. For instance, Vanhanen spoke against the building of a fifth nuclear power plant in 1992, at the same time as serving on the board of electricity corporation Fortum. He served on the Parliamentary Environment Committee 1991-1995, and was chair of the Parliamentary Grand Committee 2000-2001. He was vice chair of the Centre Party Parliamentary group 1994-2001, and Deputy Chairman of the Centre Party 2000-2003.

Another important topic for Vanhanen was Finland's foreign and security policy. As a specialist on the European Union he was a member of the European Union Constitutional Convention. There he criticized the president of the convention Giscard d'Estaing as authoritarian. Vanhanen has said [1] that he is unenthusiastic about European co-operation, and that he is an "EU pragmatist", so he may be considered an eurosceptic, especially when compared to his EU-enthusiast predecessor Paavo Lipponen.

Vanhanen resigned from the Constitutional Convention in 2003 when he became Minister of Defense in the cabinet of Prime Minister Anneli Jäätteenmäki. After Jäätteenmäki's resignation, Vanhanen was elected Prime Minister.

As a politician, Vanhanen is considered to be part of the liberal wing of the old agrarian Central Party, along with the two other Party ministers from Uusimaa region. His government cut the top income state tax rate from 35.5% to 33.5% in 2005 and 32.5% in 2006 (resulting in approximately 55% total tax rate after local government and social security taxes). Corporate tax rate was also lowered to 26% and capital gains to 28% (both former 29%), though at the same time dividends were partially put on tax. Vanhanen has said he is willing to continue tax cuts.

Presidential candidate

As the Centre Party candidate, Vanhanen challenged President Tarja Halonen in the 2006 Finnish presidential election, but did not qualify for the runoff. He received 18.6% of the vote, coming third to the National Coalition Party's Sauli Niinistö (24.1%) and Social Democrat and incumbent Tarja Halonen (46.3%). Vanhanen expressed his support for Niinistö in the runoff election against his coalition partner's candidate Halonen.

The presidential election, and cooperation between Centre Party and National Coalition Party, proved to be a major strain in the government coalition between the Centre Party and Social Democrats. The flashpoint came in March, when the Centre Party demanded national agricultural subsidies to cover farmers losses when the Finnish exception in European Union Common Agricultural Policy was about to expire. At the end of the crisis Vanhanen told his parliamentary group that taxpayers would cover ninety percent or about 100 million euros in losses.

Vanhanen has been characterised as uncharismatic and even boring, which he has attempted to turn to his advantage in tense political situations. Vanhanen is known for being a teetotaler, saying that he does not like the taste of alcohol.^[1]

Vanhanen married Merja Vanhanen 1985. They have two children: Annastiina (born 1991) and Juhana (born 1994). Matti Vanhanen and Merja Vanhanen unexpectedly announced their divorce on 6 April 2005, which has had political repercussions for the self-styled family man.

Later there were claims in the tabloid press of affairs during and after his marriage. After his divorce, Susan Kuronen was widely linked to Vanhanen ^[2] but their relationship broke down.^[3] In February 2007, Kuronen released a tell-all book The Prime Minister's Bride, which actually boosted the prime minister's popularity with the public. Tens of thousands of Finns signed an online petition against the book and many bookstores refused to put it on the shelf.^[4]

In a 2006 book commissioned for the presidential elections, Se on ihan Matti, Vanhanen compared the Finnish tabloid press to the KGB and Stasi, former Soviet Union and East German secret police agencies ^[5].

During the ASEM 2006 meeting in Helsinki, French president Jacques Chirac described Vanhanen, perhaps jokingly, as "the sexiest man in Finland".^[6]

He is also left-handed [2],

References

Wikipedia information about Matti Vanhanen This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Matti Vanhanen". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.