The Youngest Prime Minister In The World

March 31, 2020 10:22 AM

Sanna Marin became the world’s youngest state leader when she was made prime minister of Finland in December (2019) at the age of 34. Here, she sits down with Sirin Kale for the May 2020 issue of British Vogue.
posted by Mrs Potato (10 comments total)

What a wonderful story - brought a smile to my heart
posted by growabrain at 11:40 AM on March 31, 2020

Also, the world will never heal until power is 51% female
posted by growabrain at 11:41 AM on March 31, 2020

In case anyone was interested, Prime Minister Marin’s party is the Social Democratic Party of Finland and their policies/values can be found here in English (in a handy A-Z guide of what a progressive social democracy entails....). The only one that seemed like an outlier to me (in terms of topic - not position) was in relation to Western Sahara - I never knew that was a hot topic for the Nordics - is there something behind that? The only other country that gets a direct mention in the values list is Russia (which itself makes total sense given proximity and history).
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:01 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]

She is no longer the youngest world leader. That honor belongs to Sebastian Kurz, Chancellor of Austria.

Marin became Prime Minister as part of the fallout from November's Posti strike, which caused major shutdowns across Finland. The strike (and literally everything leading up to it) was woefully mishandled by her predecessor, Antti Rinne. (We got a front seat to all of this as we were in Finland for several weeks while all this was going on.) Though the leadership has changed, the platform has not; it's the same one since the RInne government. People are generally happier with Marin's government than they were with Rinne's.

Finland runs on a parliamentary system. Marin's party, the Social Democratic Party, has that platform, but they're also working with the Green League, the Left Alliance, the Swedish People's Party and the Centre Party. The opposition party, the Finns Party, is a straight-up ethnonationalist party that has gotten 17%-19% of the vote since 2011, roughly equal to the Social Democratic Party.
posted by rednikki at 3:42 PM on March 31, 2020 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this, it's heartening. Competent, clever young women must be one of the most political power deprived groups in the world, to all of our detriment.
posted by glasseyes at 9:01 AM on April 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah, Potato says she makes a great team with the Prez who is exactly double her age ;p
posted by Mrs Potato at 9:56 AM on April 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sanna Marin previously (she’s the chair who absolutely doesn’t have time for your bullshit).
posted by Kattullus at 11:01 AM on April 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

I can't believe I missed that post kattullus, been going over and over in mind what on earth I was doing in March 2017 - Marin mentions this tram thing in her interview

talking about tram things, with the new raide jokeri construction my bus stop has moved and the walk to the forest has become an obstacle course complete with roofed over wooden walkway across the massive hole in the ground

at least they're working

*sigh*
posted by Mrs Potato at 1:29 PM on April 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Walks in the forest are so restorative right now. Lucky to have one by me and I'm waiting for the bluebells
posted by glasseyes at 2:41 PM on April 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Its been so warm here I'm seeing tiny blue flowers carpeted under the leafless apple tree and slightly larger purple flowers around as well as snowdrops!
posted by Mrs Potato at 9:09 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]