{"id":312402,"date":"2017-06-12T07:35:42","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T06:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/finnish-coalition-at-risk-after-nationalists-pick-hardline-leader\/"},"modified":"2017-06-12T07:35:42","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T06:35:42","slug":"finnish-coalition-at-risk-after-nationalists-pick-hardline-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/finnish-coalition-at-risk-after-nationalists-pick-hardline-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Finnish Coalition at Risk after Nationalists Pick Hardline Leader"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Finland’s eurosceptic Finns party picked an anti-immigration hardliner as its leader on Saturday in a move that the prime minister said might lead to a break-up of the ruling coalition.<\/p>\n

At a Finns party congress, 56 percent of those voting backed European Parliament member Jussi Halla-aho, who wants Finland to leave the European Union.<\/p>\n

Halla-aho, who was fined by Finland’s Supreme Court in 2012 for comments on a blog that linked Islam to paedophilia and Somalis to theft, has said he will push the three-party coalition to tighten immigration policies, and that he will not stay in the government at any price.<\/p>\n

“We must be more aggressive in raising the topics that distinguish us from other parties … it is important to push our priorities forward more vigorously within the government program,” Halla-aho told reporters after his election.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Juha Sipila, citing differences in core values, said that there was a risk the centre-right government could break up due to Halla-aho’s nomination.<\/p>\n

“Of course (there is a risk of break-up). This is a tough spot for the government,” Sipila, from the Centre Party, told daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.<\/p>\n

The third coalition partner, the pro-EU National Coalition Party (NCP) also said it might not want to cooperate.<\/p>\n

“This requires serious contemplation. The Finns party is not the same party anymore,” Finance Minister Petteri Orpo told Verkkouutiset, an online news site.<\/p>\n

As snap elections are very rare in the Nordic country, a…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finland’s eurosceptic Finns party picked an anti-immigration hardliner as its leader on Saturday in a move that the prime minister said might lead to a break-up of the ruling coalition. At a Finns party congress, 56 percent of those voting backed European Parliament member Jussi Halla-aho, who wants Finland to leave the European Union. Halla-aho, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-312402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}