The resignation of Minister of Economic Affairs Vilhelm Junnila (Finns) has weakened mutual trust between the government parties, political researchers tell Yle.
"If it ever was strong, now it is even weaker," said Emilia Palonen, a senior lecturer at the University of Helsinki and expert on populism.
"There will still be a feeling of bad blood for a long time," predicted Kimmo Elo, a senior researcher at the University of Turku's Centre for Parliamentary Studies.
According to Elo, the quick resignation of a minister soon after surviving a parliamentary no-confidence vote shows that this was not merely a question of a lack of confidence in one person. Rather there was a desire to stop the spread of mistrust in the entire cabinet, which took office on 20 June after a record-long period of negotiations.
According to the researchers, the furore has particularly widened the rift between the Finns Party and the three other parties in the right-wing coalition government. Besides Prime Minister Petteri Orpo's National Coalition Party (NCP), these include the smaller Swedish People's Party (SPP) and the Christian Democrats.
They expect that the Finns Party's ministers and MPs will be looked at more critically in the future. This may increase the Finns Party's mistrust towards its government partners.
"The idea of a cycle of revenge has been brought up in the discussion," notes Palonen. "Do the Finns Party plan to sow mistrust in others later?".
According to her, the leaders of the two largest parties in Parliament, Orpo and Finance Minister Riikka Purra, leader of the nationalist Finns Party, have aimed for strong mutual trust and refrained from questioning each other's decisions. Now a lack of trust could endanger the government's ability to remain in office for the full four-year legislative term.
"The decisive factor will be how the NCP in the future relates to the Finns Party, because the dynamics of this duo will keep the government together," said Elo.
According to Palonen, the Finns Party have long had problems defining themselves in relation to the extreme right. Some of the party's politicians have flaunted their extreme right-wing views while at the same time the party has publicly renounced them.
"Is it the case that since Purra strongly defended Junnila, the extreme right will continue to support her and the Finns Party?," Palonen asked.
Besides Junnila's long-running, well-documented ties to far-right and neo-Nazi groups and his controversial statements on abortion, Yle also reported on Friday that he had fabricated most of his educational and work history.
The Junnila uproar has also been difficult for the NCP. All but two members of its 48 MPs supported the disgraced minister in Wednesday's parliamentary vote of confidence.
All 10 SPP lawmakers either voted against Junnila or abstained in the confidence vote, which he only survived because 12 opposition MPs did not turn up for the vote.
According to Palonen, the challenge of the NCP is to renounce Junnila while at the same time maintaining a relationship with the Finns Party in order to preserve cabinet unity.
Triumph of the ministerial institution
Elo sees a positive side in the recent uproar: the ministerial institution retained its prestige.
"This individual's previous actions stood in contrast to the status of the ministerial institution in politics. I think that the ministerial institution won out," he said.
According to Elo, the importance of the matter is bolstered by the fact that Junnila resigned only 10 days after taking office, making his term the shortest in Finnish history. Junnila lacked the level of respect required to serve as a minister, so he was forced to step down.
However, in Palonen's opinion, the entire government's credibility will be questioned following the week's events.
"As ministers, we want to have people with impeccable records who take democracy seriously. The fact that he resigned so quickly raises questions about how serious Orpo's government is in general," she suggested.
Interior minister's comments in the spotlight
In her view, the next step will be to consider whether there are other problematic cases among the cabinet ministers.
On Friday evening, following Junnila's resignation, Yle drew attention to past tweets by Interior Minister Mari Rantanen of the Finns Party referring to a conspiracy theory known as "the great replacement," which the Finnish Interior Ministry has identified as a far-right justification for terrorist violence.
Yle also found that a sentence had recently been removed from Rantanen's website. The sentence made an apparently racist pun based on the Finnish word for naïve, which literally means blue-eyed, warning that "we shouldn't be so naïve or soon we won't be blue-eyed".