Ice-Bucket Tempest

Finland has long winters (the ice sometimes lasts until May), long one-word palindromes (up to 15 letters) and long political arguments (it took four months to form a government after the 1970 election). By contrast, Finnish Cabinets themselves are exceedingly short-lived: the 55th in 54 years of independence was dissolved last October by President Urho Kekkonen, who himself has remained in power since 1956. Kekkonen acted primarily because the center-left coalition incumbents could not solve a row over lagging farm incomes.

As politicians campaigned through the wintry countryside preparing for last week's parliamentary elections, farmers gave one candidate the cold shoulder by drowning out his voice beneath the roar of their tractor engines. With 75% of the country's three million voters going to the polls, the election proved to be a tempest in an ice bucket. Almost nothing changed, and no single party dominated, leaving Kekkonen with the task of forming yet another coalition Cabinet.

In Finland, Cabinetmaking is almost a folk art, primarily because there are too many parties. Eight major political groups ranging from Communists to Conservatives are further split by a host of quarreling factions. One Helsinki newspaper utilized a computer, which figured out that because of the splintered groups there were 123 possible combinations. It is virtually certain that the new Cabinet will include the Communists, who have 36 of the 200 parliamentary seats, and exclude the Conservatives (34 seats) because the Soviets are openly hostile to them. What other factions will join the Cabinet is still anyone's guess.

Despite the frequent Cabinet changes, Finland has a remarkable record of political stability. Almost all the parties and their disparate factions agree on the basic issues: absolute neutrality between East and West and trade with the Common Market. Rather like Greta Garbo. Finland vants to be left alone, but it cannot afford to be. Sharing 788 miles of its 1,583-mile frontier with the Soviet Union, with whom it fought brutal losing wars in 1939-43, Finland is secure only while remaining neutral.

While it must give guarded political glances to the East, economically Finland looks to the West. The country has a forest-based economy that suffered a letdown after the boom of 1968-70 and is now faced with inflation, rising unemployment, a drop in G.N.P. growth from 8% to 1% in 1971, and a trade gap that last year topped $250 million. The country is counting heavily on the favorable outcome of free-trade agreements now being hammered out with the Common Market--particularly important when Britain, Finland's most important trading partner, joins the EEC.

Because of Finland's economic problems, President Kekkonen wanted the parliamentary elections--which were originally scheduled for 1974 --out of the way, especially since there will also be a presidential election that year. At 71, Kekkonen, who is well thought of by the Soviets, is a symbol of shrewdness and stability in the muddle of Finnish politics. A member of the middle-of-the-road Center Party, Kekkonen has managed to weld the leftists and moderates into a viable majority and is therefore the most likely candidate to succeed himself. In Helsinki they joke: "We've had 600 years of the Swedes, 100 years of the Russians and 15 years of Kekkonen." But there is no one else of his stature in sight, and his successful brand of neutrality enables Finns to live next door to Communists while governing themselves as democrats and acting like capitalists.

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