Jäähyväiset semipresidentialismille

Authors

• Dag Anckar

Abstract

Since the late 1980’s Finnish Constitution has been amended several times, and was finally thoroughly redrafted in 1999. In consequence of these events, Finland has undergone a regime change, moving from semipresidentialism to semiparliamentarism. During the former stages of her political life Finland has experienced strong as well as weak presidents; in the future, however, due to the constitutional changes, the Finnish President will always be a fairly weak political actor. True, the new Constitution still assings the leadership in foreign policy to the presidency, in collaboration with the Cabinet; this very vague description, however, does not imply a true leading position in Finnish foreign policy, now much dominated by considerations pertaining to the interests of the European Union. As long as the presidency exercised considerable powers, something could indeed be said in favour of the direct method of election that was introduced a decade ago. Today, however, as the method fosters the well-known constitutional problem of dual legitimacy and also gives the voters a false impression of the presidential powers, it no longer serves a meaningful purpose. Clearly, the direct method of election should be abandoned and replaced with an indirect method, the simplest solution being that Parliament elects the President.