Sanna Marin, the 34-year-old female becomes the youngest ever Finland’s prime minister, The Local Sweden reports.
The Social Democrats’ prime minister candidate vote in Helsinki showed that Ms Marin, 34, will hold the post of prime minister. On Sunday, the SDP’s members made her the youngest head of government in Finland’s history.
The issue of her age could be a stumbling block for picking a new Finnish PM, but Marin insisted that “we have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust” first of all.
The 34-year-old politician has been deflecting questions about her age. She is ready, in fact, to replace outgoing leader Antti Rinne who resigned on Tuesday after losing the confidence of the coalition partner Center Party over his handling of a postal strike.
“I have never thought about my age or gender, I think of the reasons I got into politics and those things for which we have won the trust of the electorate,” Marin said.
According to Marin, SDP had a shared government program which they have committed to. The SDP won April’s legislative elections on promises to end years of economic belt-tightening introduced by the Centre Party to lift Finland out of a recession.
In Europe, another young prime minister is Ukraine’s prime minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, who is currently 35.
The crisis in Finland’s postal service became the reason for stepping down of the previous PM. In November, the widespread strikes emerged over whether or not Rinne had previously endorsed the cutbacks, leading to the Centre Party declaring it had lost its trust in the prime minister last Monday.
Now, Finland’s Parliament is expected to formally swear in the new prime minister on Tuesday.
