Turning into president is “the best honour of my life”, mentioned Alexander Stubb. (File)
HelsinkI:
Former prime minister, triathlete and Europhile Alexander Stubb secured a triumphant return to politics Sunday after a seven-year hiatus, successful the Finnish presidency in Sunday’s election.
The previous chief of the Nationwide Conservative Occasion’s bid for the workplace was prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I can say, hand on coronary heart, that consideration was not actuality earlier than the battle started”, he mentioned when asserting his candidacy in August. “When the fatherland calls, you go.”
“I imagine that one of the crucial necessary duties for the subsequent presidential time period is to work for the preservation of the rule-based worldwide system,” Stubb mentioned.
Upon successful the election, Stubb mentioned changing into president was the “the best honour of my life.”
With 98 % of votes counted in Sunday’s run-off.Stubb had 51.7 %. His opponent Pekka Haavisto conceded.
Stubb was propelled to the center of Finnish politics by probability, because the then MEP changed get together colleague Ilkka Kanerva as international minister in 2008 after the latter was pressured to resign over a sequence of textual content messages to an erotic dancer.
Leaving Brussels behind, Stubb initially moved again into his childhood residence in Helsinki, and has mentioned that he was doubtless the world’s solely international minister to reside with their father.
Stubb then served as prime minister from 2014 to 2015.
To NATO’s core
The president elect has advised Finnish media that as a brand new NATO member, Finland ought to “go to the core of NATO and to “produce, not eat, security”.
Finland dropped a long time of navy non-alignment and utilized for membership within the navy alliance within the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine — although Stubb had already been a long-time supporter of a NATO bid.
In his forties, Stubb took up triathlon, and his enthusiasm for sport additionally made its mark on the international ministry the place pastries and occasional had been changed by fruit and well being drinks.
Nonetheless, the 55-year-old put competitions on pause to concentrate on the race for president.
Throughout his time period as prime minister, he got here underneath hearth from the media for sporting shorts to a press convention in regards to the scenario in Ukraine in 2014 and for appearing as a human dartboard in a theme park.
In accordance with Stubb himself, one among his greatest errors as prime minister was to grant permission to the development of a nuclear energy plant along with Russia’s state-owned Rosatom.
His profession hit a snag after his get together got here second in 2015 elections and he switched to the function of minister of finance.
He then misplaced the management of his get together to now-prime minister Petteri Orpo, and in 2017 he left the Finnish parliament to turn out to be vice chairman of the European Funding Financial institution.
After shedding the race for the EU Fee presidency in 2018, Stubb left politics for academia, and has spent the previous three years as director of the College of Transnational Governance on the European College Institute and professor in Florence, Italy.
A father of two, Stubb married Suzanne Innes-Stubb, presently head of worldwide compliance at elevator engineering firm Kone, in 1998.
A Finnish-British twin nationwide, she would be the first foreign-born first girl in Finland.
Stubb turned a sought-after commentator in international media after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, highlighting how in 2008 he had predicted that the battle between Russia and Georgia would mark a turning level in international coverage.
Stubb has lived within the US, France, the UK, Belgium, Luxemburg and Italy, and says he can maintain negotiations in “wonderful” Finnish, Swedish, English and French and “good” German.
The presidency implies that as soon as once more, he’ll transfer again to Finland.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)