The Center Party is the party that represents by-and-large the rest of Finland. That is, most of its MPs represent rural districts.

Of course once they are MVPs they spend most of their time in Helsinki and become somewhat suspect to the people who elected them.

Not however it would seem suspect enough to not elect them next time.

So we had in the now distant past the case of a Center MVP who when he was a minister was accused of coupling a personal request for a loan to his own company with him as minister granting some aid to the bank in question.

As a result of the doubts about this he was - after a long process - finally kicked out of Parliament (something that has happened only that once in the almost 20 years I have been in Finland). However not long after there were new general elections and he stood again and the people in his rural community elected him back and he turned up again as if nothing had happened.

(He was finally not elected at the last general election, after being re-elected at least once more after that first time.)

The reason I bring this up now is because for the past couple of years (and especially the last year) the Center Party has had a general secretary who has spent most of his time making public statements that are completely out of touch with what the prime minister and other Center Party ministers have been saying publically.

So with him standing for re-election this time, there was an alternative candidate (a former minister - if I remember correctly, one who temporarily replaced a female minister while she was off "work" to have a baby) who stood on a platform of the party secretary working alongside the leader of the party rather than in opposition to him.

Needless to say, the old general secretary was confirmed in office by something like 1200 to 400 votes. Apparently the (mostly rural) voters at the party congress saw him as a representative of traditional Finnish values as compared to the "Helsinki-oriented" views of the party leaders ...

Traditional Finnish values like disloyalty to your party leader, perhaps!