A Finnish MP has been appointed president of the parliamentary assembly of the intergovernmental association the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Ilkka Kanerva had recently served as part of an OSCE working group in Ukraine, and since 2013 has been serving as a vice-president of the parliamentary assembly.
He was elected president after a vote in which he beat current president Ratko Krivokapic of Montenegro by 111 votes to 96, and will now serve as president during the organisation’s 40 anniversary meeting in Helsinki next year.
“It is my wish and personal ambition to recall the spirit of Helsinki,” Kanerva said in his acceptance statement, referencing the OSCE’s founding document which was agreed in 1975.
The Turku MP has been in parliament since he was first elected in 1975 and has been Minister of Transport, Minister of Labour, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Finland.
Kanerva’s long career has not been scandal-free. In 2008 he was forced to resign as Foreign Minister after a scandal involving text messages sent to a glamour model, and he was first convicted and then in 2013 acquitted on appeal in a long-running bribery case.