Note that a majority of the cases,
378 as of Sunday, 22 March are in Helsinki-Uusimaa region, with just 1.2 M people.
I'd like to emphasize that the difference between mzzj and Siwastaja or myself is
not political, but something different, more like temperament or attitude. I hope this will come out as neutral, and illustrates the difficulty in managing the situation; I have no intention of claiming one is better than the other, only that one might be more appropriate for this particular situation, and much less so for some other situations. I've also seen people I know well shifting from one to the other (both ways!) as their own situation has changed. Keep this in mind, okay?
In this axis, there are two basic groups of Finns. One group believes that we can do whatever we want, including rejecting old agreements (breaking them, essentially), set whatever new laws the country wants, and that it is a matter of
will. The other group believes that their choices are based on existing
law (and international agreements), and that there is really only one sane course, the one they propose.
Funny side note: Remember the movie Iron Sky?
Which country didn't arm their spaceship? It is extremely funny to Finns, because it is true!
There is almost zero discussion between the two. It is made even harder, as the second group misunderstands the first group, because they observe the suggestions from the point of what they believe current law and international agreements allow.
(In 2015, when there was a flood of asylum seekers from Sweden to Finland, one side wanted to "close the borders", i.e. re-enact border checks, and reject those who came from another safe EU country to Finland seeking asylum. A lot of people objected, because they sincirely believed that doing that would necessarily also close the border for all other traffic as well. Correct or not, that illustrates the difficulty in the two sides' attitudes, and the difficulty in getting the true ideas across.)
Because of this divide/difference, there is actually very little discussion between the two groups on
how things could be done. Internally, there is usually a lively discussion (on one side, about what kind of changes would be needed; on the other, the leeway given by existing law and agreements, and how other countries have applied or misapplied those), but it is not reflected by the media. Indeed, the mainstream media only reflects the latter, for whatever reason. (That does not mean that group is happy about the media, though.)
The annoying part, the one that really bothers and angers me, is that because of that lack of honest discussion, the latter group will invariably resort to "nobody could foresee this" and "hindsight is 20/20" type arguments afterwards. Obviously, neither group is willing to actually take responsibility, because we are all humans, but
rejecting direct, honest discussion of the practically available approaches and possible solutions, does not mean that you can label the other suggestions as "hindsight" afterwards.
I first observed this as a child, when the Finnish officials delayed revealing the
Chernobyl disaster. Like now, they sincirely believed that people would be better off not knowing. (This is prevalent in Finnish media, who are much more concerned about what Finns
should not hear about, than they are about what they should hear.) As an adult, I was among the ones who were called "Linux zealots" and "conspiracy theorist" when we correctly predicted the downfall of Nokia into Microsoft ownership when Stephen Elop became Nokia's CEO. (I should point out that a lot of people
still consider me a conspiracy theorist for Nokia, even though I said even then that I don't think there is any conspiracy, that the end result would simply be a logical result of the business strategy, and nothing sinister.
)
The reason I don't think this is political (in the commonly used sense), is that this grouping is independent of political views. There is not much correlation with this way of grouping to Left-Right or Socialist-Capitalist axes; you find members of both groups in all political parties here. As long as no action is taken, or major changes made, this major difference does not cause deep rifts within the political parties. (In a very real sense, you could say that the split in the True Finns party a few years ago was exactly due to this rift, though -- so perhaps there is one party that does include mostly the first group and very few of the second group, because they already split along these lines.)
I fear that this rift between the two groups is what is driving the no-action/minimal-action policy; that action is avoided because it would lead to internal political problems, and not because the political groups are internally in agreement as to what course of action is best
for the whole country.
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