HELSINKI: Finland’s centre-right political leader Petteri Orpo won a nail-biting three-way election race on Sunday, with the far-right Finns political Party in second position ahead of Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Social Democrats party in third place.
“This was a great win,” Orpo, the chief of the National Coalition Party, told his fellows and supporters, saying: “On the ground of this poll result… we are going to start negotiating a government in the country.”
The largest party in Finland’s parliament traditionally takes the first chance to constitute a government, and since the 1990s that political party has always claimed the office of the prime minister.
The chief of the far-right Finns Party, Riikka Purra also thanked her supporters and party workers for the party’s “best poll result ever”.
With 96 % of votes counted, the centre-right was credited with 48 seats of the 200 in the country’s parliament, the far-right with 46 seats and the Social Democrats with 43 seats.
