Vehviläinen elected Speaker of Parliament

Suomen Keskusta (Centre Party of Finland) lawmaker and former minister, Anu Vehviläinen has been elected the Speaker of the Finnish Parliament on Tuesday.

She bagged 167 votes in the 200-seat parliament, said an official press release.

Vehviläinen took over the charge immediately after the lawmakers elected her to replace Matti Vanhanen, who already took over the charge as the Finance Minister of the country in the morning.

Vanhanen, also a former prime minister and chief of the party was appointed as the Finance Minister following resignation of former Finance Minister Katri Kulmuni.

Kulmuni, also Chair of Keskusta, the second largest component of the five-party alliance government resigned from the post of finance minister cum deputy prime minister on Friday following a controversy raised over a service procurement of about EUR 50,000 from a communications consultancy firm.

Earlier, on Monday evening, Keskusta nominated Vehviläinen as the Speaker of parliament.

After being elected Vehviläinen thanked MPs for expressing their confidence to her and assured to do her best to be worthy of their trust.

Vehviläinen, a lawmaker from Joensuu served as a minister twice in the past.

The 56-year-old Speaker served as minister of local government and public reforms from 2015 to 2019, as well as served as transport minister for a brief period last year.

Xinhua adds: In her acceptance speech, Vehviläinen said the COVID-19 crisis taught the Finnish parliament a lesson on emergency resilience. "The lesson from this spring is that working procedures must be reformed in such a way that parliament can take decisions in all circumstances," she said.

She explained that after initial difficulties, work from distance was made possible in committees.

The Speaker later at a press conference said that procedures for distant voting in committees, and possibly later in the plenaries, are now being investigated.

She believed Finland has been among the widest users of distant work, in proportion to population, and "parliament is part of that experiment".

Vehviläinen said she would recommend distant working until September at least. She remarked though that the public-access galleries of parliament were kept open all through the crisis.

In the national protocol in Finland, the Speaker of Parliament is the second in ranking after the President. Speakers are elected for one annual parliamentary year at a time. Vehviläinen's term will end in February 2021.

It is customary that the speaker represents the second largest party in the reigning government coalition.