The right-wing nationalist Finns Party has emerged in recent years, winning 20 percent of the vote last year and entering a governing coalition as the country’s second-largest political force.
But since the party came to power, one government minister has had to apologize for racist comments, another was forced to resign after making Nazi references and, most recently, a lawmaker was expelled from the party after firing a gun outside a bar. .
Riikka Purra, finance minister and party president, said last week that the party had acted quickly to address the most recent incident, which involved lawmaker Timo Vornanen. However, Ms Purra told national broadcaster Yle: “We are still, perhaps above all, the kind of party that people outside politics join.”
“For better or worse, our members can be plagued by problems like this,” he said.
Police said a 54-year-old man, whom Finns Party officials identified as Mr. Vornanen, a member of the party’s Parliament, pointed a gun at two people and shot them into the ground around 4 a.m. on April 26. . after a fight in a bar in central Helsinki.
Police did not name Mr Vornanen, as is customary in Finland while an investigation is underway, but Mr Vornanen, 54, acknowledged his involvement in the incident and the fact that he was carrying a weapon. Vornanen said he would remain a member of Parliament and founded an independent parliamentary group.
Helsinki police chief investigator Jukka Larkio told Yle that “quite a bit of alcohol had been consumed” on Thursday night and into the early hours of the morning when the fight broke out at the bar near the Finnish Parliament building. . The drink, he said, “surely had an effect.”
Vornanen, from the Finnish town of Joensuu, is a former police officer and sits on the parliamentary intelligence oversight committee.
Finland, a country of hunters and gun enthusiasts, has one of the highest rates of firearms ownership in Europe, but has strict rules about how weapons can be used and how they must be stored.
In a Facebook post, Vornanen said he had been granted a license to carry a firearm due to his previous work as a police officer and for protection, and that his license allowed him to carry the weapon in public spaces.
Vornanen announced his expulsion on Monday in the Finnish media, and Harri Vuorenpaa, the party secretary, confirmed it in an email to the Times.
The party refused to explain the reason for the expulsion, but after the incident, several party figures condemned the act.
Interior Minister Mari Rantanen called Vornanen’s act “foolish” and Finance Minister Purra said Vornanen had lost her trust. “It would be extraordinary if I had confidence in a person who carries a gun while drunk in a public place and fires it,” she told Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.
Vornanen did not respond to a request for comment, but had previously said in another Facebook post that it would be fair for a neutral investigation to be completed “before this type of public lynching.”
Johanna Vuorelma, a political science researcher at the University of Helsinki, said the Finnish Party is a protest party that has historically presented itself as opposed to mainstream politics, with members coming from the margins of the political scene.
So, Ms. Vuorelma said, although party representatives “have been forced to clean up their image” while in government, “there are still these scandals, these cases where party representatives act in ways that are not “I would expect from a government.” party.”