The presumptive frontrunner Social Democratic nominee for Finland’s January 2018 presidential elections, MP Eero Heinäluoma, said on Sunday that he will not be his party’s candidate in the election.
Heinäluoma announced his decision in his online column for the media outlet MTV3, saying that the recent death of his spouse has left him grieving, and for this reason he doesn’t feel prepared to take up the responsibility.
The former parliamentary speaker promoted his party colleague Jutta Urpilainen as the ideal SDP candidate. He said the former finance minister, who succeeded him as chair of the SDP, has all the qualities required of a president.
Urpilainen started a parental leave in March 2016 to take care of her first child, whom she adopted from Columbia. She did not care to comment on the news.
Antti Rinne, the current chair of the Social Democratic Party, which is once again showing strong support in political polling, announced in mid-April that he wouldn’t be running, saying that there were many other good SDP candidates.
Now that Heinäluoma and Rinne are out, that leaves Urpilainen and Erkki Liiikanen, current head of the Bank of Finland, as the two top picks. Neither has indicated an interest in the candidacy to date. Grand old SDP man, MP and former long-serving foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja is widely considered a long shot.
As for the other parties, Finns Party chair Timo Soini ruled himself out of the presidential race earlier in the spring.
So far only the Centre Party’s former prime minister Matti Vanhanen has thrown his hat into the ring to run against the incumbent Finnish President Sauli Niinistö.
Niinistö, who ran in the previous election as the National Coalition party candidate, hasn’t yet confirmed if he will run for office again.