You know, there’s irony in the fact that the leadership of the Swedish minority in Finland is the champion of multicultural policies, all the while their numbers drop and their significance in Finnish politics slowly being diminished by the increased demographics of foreigners in Finland.
Also add to that, the fact that the autonomous Swedish speaking enclave of the Åland islands that rests in the Bay of Botnia between Finland and Sweden. This autonomous region fiercely restricts immigration and who can own what on the island archipelago, though they champion multiculti politics for the mainland. Talk about having the nerve.
NOTE: Swedish became an official 2nd language of Finland purely from political chicanery during the Kekkonen years when he ran Finland in a top down-like fiefdom. The Central Party at the time used the Swedish speaking Finns to shore up its coalition majorities. In Finland, the majority of people do not speak Swedish if they don’t have to, they would rather speak in English, that’s a fact.
Sign reads: ”Swedish is good, forcing it is bad”
Swedish remains obligatory in Finnish schools
Parliament has voted by a wide margin to keep Swedish-language instruction compulsory in Finnish schools. On Friday afternoon, MPs rejected a citizens’ initiative calling for an end to the requirement by 134 votes to 48.
The Education and Culture Committee had voted last month to reject the initiative, which was heavily backed by the opposition Finns Party.
The legislature did however approve a motion allowing more flexibility in language teaching in Eastern Finland – where schools have long argued that Russian would be more useful to learn than the minority Swedish language. That motion was narrowly approved by a vote of 93 to 89. Unusually, it was filed jointly by the prime minister’s National Coalition Party in partnership with the main opposition Centre Party.
Finland, which was ruled by Sweden for centuries up until 1809, is home to a gradually-diminishing Swedish-speaking population, which lives mostly along the coast. Last year, that minority of some 5.3 percent was exceeded for the first time by foreign-language speakers.
