Despite the Centre suffering a second consecutive heavy loss in parliamentary elections, party chair Annika Saarikko plans to stay on at the helm of party.
On Saturday, the outgoing finance minister addressed the party council, its highest decision-making body, as its weekend meeting began in Helsinki.
She blamed the Centre's loss on gains by the Finns Party, which she said channelled the concerns of rural voters against the Centre Party.
Saarikko admitted that the loss was painful and said that lessons must be learned from it.
"Am I one of those who should be cleaned out or am I one of the cleaners?" she asked rhetorically.
Saarikko wondered aloud whether she had the necessary support to carry on.
"Power comes with responsibility. Should I run away and leave the scene? No, I won't," she vowed.
"I am committed to leading the Centre until the party congress in the summer of 2024," Saarikko said.
The day after the 2 April parliamentary election, Saarikko announced that the party's place was in the opposition. Last week, the Centre declined to answer a list of questions sent to each party by premier-designate Petteri Orpo (NCP) regarding their positions vis a vis the next government's agenda.
Two other leaders of parties in the outgoing government have announced that they will step down: Greens chair and Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Maria Ohisalo is to be replaced at a party conference in early June, and outgoing PM and Social Democratic Party (SDP) chair Sanna Marin will hand over to a new chair in September. Saarikko's Centre often seemed to be working at cross purposes with their parties since Marin took over as PM in late 2019.
Fall from 'big three' status
The Centre – which was one of the 'big three' parties through most of Finnish history – lost eight seats in the parliamentary elections and now has just 23 MPs in Parliament, its lowest total ever since Finland gained independence in 1917.
That year, when it was still known as the Agrarian League, the party had 26 seats in the legislature. That rose to a record high of 60 in 1929, when one of its leaders, Lauri Relander, was president. The Centre produced two more presidents: Kyösti Kallio (1937-40) and Urho Kekkonen (1956-82).
In Parliament, the party retained a solid block of more than 40 seats except for a brief dip into the 30s in the 1970s. A few years earlier, it had changed its name to the Centre in an effort to broaden its traditional agricultural support base. The party still has close ties to the Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners (MTK).
The party rose back to 55 seats in 2003, when Centre chair Anneli Jäätteenmäki became Finland's first female prime minister – although only briefly, stepping down after just two months after being caught lying to Parliament about leaked documents. She was immediately replaced as PM and party chair by Matti Vanhanen, who held the post for seven years. His successor as party leader, Juha Sipilä, served as premier in 2015-19.
He was followed as party chair by Katri Kulmuni, under whose watch the party's popularity began to slump. Saarikko took over from Kulmuni in September 2020 after Kulmuni was embroiled in an expenses scandal, but has failed to reverse the party's fortunes.
In the 2015 parliamentary elections, 49 Centre MPs were elected to Parliament, so over the past two legislative terms, the size of its parliamentary group has collapsed by more than half.
It is now in a fairly distant fourth place among the eight parties in Parliament. The current 'big three' – the National Coalition (NCP), Finns Party and the SDP – all hold well over 40 seats.
In the coming weeks, Orpo will seek to form a strong governing coalition with either the Finns Party or the SDP, plus several small parties.