Veikko Vennamo

Veikko Vennamo in autumn 1989

Veikko Emil Aleksander Vennamo , until 1938 Fennander (born June 11, 1913 in Jaakkima in today's Republic of Karelia , Russia , † June 12, 1997 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish politician . Vennamo sat in the Reichstag from 1945 to 1962 and from 1966 to 1987 . In 1959 he was one of the founders of the SMP farmers' party .

Life

Vennamo was born in Jaakkima as Veikko Fennander and the son of Emil Fennander, a branch manager of a bank, and Fanny Siviä (née Haikala). In 1931 he enrolled at Viipuri University after graduating from high school . He was married to the sister of the architect Kaija Sirén , Sirkka Tuominen. In 1938 he changed his last name from the Swedish Fennander to the Finnish Vennamo.

In 1945 he entered the Reichstag for the Landbund . In Urho Kekkonen's fifth cabinet , he was Deputy Minister of Finance from 1954 to 1956 under Penna Tervo of the Social Democratic Party. After Kekkonen's election as Finnish President in 1956, Vennamo began to develop into a critic of Kekkonen's foreign policy, who was also a member of the Landbund, and was a pro-Soviet foreign policy. In 1959 he founded the SMP, which became a protest party for small farmers and socially disadvantaged people. Vennamo was a staunch opponent of the leftist governments of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1968, 1978 and 1982 he was a presidential candidate and also competed against Kekkonen in the first two appearances. In 1968 Vennamo received 11.35% of the vote in the electoral elections. In 1978, when almost all parties supported Urho Kekkonen, Vennamo received just 4.68%. The electoral alliance supporting Kekkonen had come up with 82.41% in the elections. In 1982 he received only 2.3%. The Social Democrat Mauno Koivisto was elected Kekkonen's successor in these elections.

Vennamo had been chairman of the SMP from 1959 to 1979. After he founded the party in 1959 and left the Landbund, he sat in the Finnish Reichstag until 1962 without belonging to a parliamentary group. In the 1962 parliamentary elections , the SMP received 2.2% of the vote, which usually guaranteed a seat in parliament, but due to the Finnish electoral system and the division of electoral districts, the SMP did not get a seat. Four years later, the SMP won although only 1.0% of the vote, Vennamo was the only candidate of his party to make it into the Reichstag. In the 1970 elections , the SMP achieved its best result with 10.5% and from now on has 18 MPs. Vennamo sat in the Reichstag until the elections in 1987 . After his withdrawal, however, the influence of the Suomen maaseudun puolue also waned, which received only 4.9% and 1.3% of the vote in the subsequent elections in 1991 and 1995, respectively.

The politician Timo Soini, who was general secretary of the SMP from 1992 to 1995 and later made the headlines in the parliamentary elections in 2011 with his basic fins , is considered to be Vennamo's foster son.