Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the National Coalition Party says that government cooperation will continue despite the latest release of old racist comments by a Finns Party cabinet minister.
The PM was reacting to racist text messages by Minister of Economic Affairs Wille Rydman (Finns) published by the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on Sunday.
Orpo told Yle that Rydman's messages were "inappropriate" but that it was important for the cabinet to get down to work.
"Even though these were private messages, that language is inappropriate and I cannot accept such a way of speaking. But the government's work is what needs to be taken care of," said Orpo.
Orpo said it was "absolutely essential" that Rydman had said on Twitter that he was committed to the government's anti-racism statement, issued earlier this month.
The messages date back to 2016, when Rydman was an MP representing the NCP and a member of two key parliamentary committees.
He left the NCP after numerous women accused him of harassing minors. Early this year he joined the Finns Party and in early July became economic affairs minister, replacing fellow Finns Party MP Vilhelm Junnila, who resigned over his close, long-running links to extremist right-wing groups and falsified CV.
Orpo said that he had not discussed the matter with Rydman himself, but that the leaders of the four governing parties had talked about it on Friday morning. He added that the government would hold an internal seminar on 16 August to discuss communications.
Purra downplays messages
Rydman had not commented on the messages by Friday other than to say he was considering legal action against the newspaper for publishing them. He is already involved in a legal dispute with the paper over its reporting of the harassment allegations last year.
The Finns Party chair, Finance Minister and deputy PM Riikka Purra, also said that Rydman's messages were "inappropriate," but downplayed them, saying they were private messages released by a disgruntled former romantic partner.
She has faced her own uproar over racist, violent posts made a decade and a half ago on an immigration forum hosted by Jussi Halla-aho, now Speaker of Parliament and the apparent Finns Party presidential candidate. On Sunday, Purra issued a new defence of her record on racism.
Since taking office five weeks ago, Orpo's right-wing government has been rocked by a series of scandals involving racist comments and far-right ties involving cabinet ministers from the nationalist Finns Party.
SPP condemns comments, plans to discuss larger picture
The fate of the four-party government may lie in the hands of one of its junior partners, the Swedish People's Party (SPP). The centrist language-based party is deeply divided over cabinet participation, with former minister of social services Eva Biaudet leading an informal group calling for the SPP to quit the coalition.
With its nine seats in Parliament, the SPP could topple the government if it votes with the opposition in confidence votes expected when Parliament reconvenes in September. In June, none of the SPP lawmakers voted with the other government parties in the Junnila confidence vote, which he narrowly survived due to absences by opposition MPs.
On Friday afternoon SPP chair and education minister Anna-Maja Henriksson told Helsingin Sanomat that she would have hoped for an apology from Rydman over his messages.
"That has not happened. This does not make the overall situation easier, as we have to evaluate this at some point," Henriksson commented to HS.
According to Henriksson, the messages reveal Rydman's own thoughts, even though they were private messages. According to Henriksson, the messages are "very inappropriate" and "racist".
Henriksson told HS that her party's parliamentary group plans to have a broad discussion of the overall situation in August.
Meanwhile SPP parliamentary group chair Otto Andersson told the commercial MTV News on Friday that Rydman's language was "harsh, racist and really inappropriate". He added that "the situation was already extremely serious before, and yesterday's news about Rydman does not improve it."