Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin (the SDP) has found herself in the wildest media frenzy of her career as the premier, a post she has held since 2019.
It all began last Wednesday night when a video montage from social media found its way on the pages of the Finnish media.
In the videos, that were filmed on Saturday, August 6, in a private apartment somewhere in Helsinki (Marin has constantly refused to say where), the Finnish prime minister dances wildly with her friends, some known from the pages of the Finnish yellow press, others heard on the airwaves of the radio.
So what? One may ask.
“If a crisis would occur, I would be aware of that before midnight on Saturday,” Prime Minister Marin said last Friday at the Finnish premier’s official residence, Kesäranta, in a press conference related to her party-hard-weekend.
Maybe so; maybe not. What we do know is that Finland is living through exceptional times in the middle of a process of seeking membership in the military alliance, NATO. Also, according to sources in the Finnish afternoon newspaper Iltalehti, the Finnish Defence Forces have been in a state of increased preparedness since the summer by the decision of the government.
So, some politicians, rightfully so, have expressed their concern over the condition and availability of the prime minister should something serious happen after the prime minister has arrived home in the wee hours of the morning after a long night out. (On that night, Marin admitted she drank many drinks of mild alcohol but didn’t count how many.)
Another question Marin had to deal with last week also was, whether or not she had on that very night used drugs. In the videos, one can hear the group referring to “jauhojengi.” This translates to the “powder gang” in English – – – even with a poorer imagination, a direct reference to powder-like drugs, such as amphetamine and cocaine.
After being asked about that Marin has repeatedly said she has never taken drugs. She didn’t know what the expression in the video was about. Neither had she seen anyone using drugs. Her drug test, signed by a doctor, also turned out to be negative on Monday, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Ok. But there are other troubling points to consider as well. It’s important to stress that on the party weekend, Marin was officially on duty, not on vacation, and no replacement was named after her should she for one reason or another be unable to take care of her duties. (According to our knowledge, she canceled her vacation just before the party weekend.)
Unlike others, we will not publish screen captures or video clips of the wild night out. They were, after all, shared by an unknown person from a private Instagram account, and to this day, no one knows who shared them.
Neither will we share a video where she dances intimately with a Finnish man who is a known singer and actor in a nightclub on the very same night. There’s a moment when the man appears to kiss Marin’s neck.
So what?
In that video “nothing happened that my husband wouldn’t know about,” Marin said in the press conference on Friday. (If someone is interested in these clips, they can be easily found on the web.)
At the Ambassadors’ Conference at the Little Parliament on Tuesday, today, Prime Minister Marin, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a white collar shirt, answered topical questions related to daily politics.
Then she was asked about a photograph that had been taken at the premises near the public toilet in Kesäranta where two women, her friends, are kissing after having lifted their shirts to expose their breasts. One of them was holding the Finland sign, known from public conferences at the premier’s table. This sign was barely enough to cover their titties.
On Tuesday, Marin admitted that the photograph was taken on Sunday, July 10 to be exact, after she returned from Ruisrock festival from the southwestern city of Turku to Kesäranta with her friends to enjoy sauna, swimming and roaming around the neatly cut grass of the 19th-century villa in Helsinki’s Meilahti district, which, for now, is also her and her family’s home.
At this writing, a video shared on TikTok is circulating on social media where some of the worst lyrics ever applied to Finnish rap music are used to illustrate the action in the photograph taken at the toilet while a group of five walks the pathway at Kesäranta where so many heads of states have been featured in our photographs before. (Marin is not included in this video.)
About the picture, Prime Minister Marin had this to say on Tuesday:
“I don’t think that photograph is appropriate, I apologize for that.”
Meanwhile, the media caught up with the finance minister, Annika Saarikko (the Centre), at the party’s summer meeting on the west coast in Pori. She was asked if she thought that the picture was appropriate considering what happened in the photograph and where it was taken.
“It’s not my business to become a moralist, but undeniably when I saw that picture, I recognized that wall from somewhat other contexts,” Finance Minister Saarikko said.
But what if after all the partying, if only by the grace of a higher being, Prime Minister Marin could still wake up without a hint of a hangover?
It’s possible if you were at the press conference on Friday and asked the prime minister:
“I have been drunk, but I have walked on my own feet. I haven’t had a hangover on any single morning.”
