Later Years and Death
In later years of his career, Sorsa went into his Social Democratic Party's primary elections as candidate for president in 1993, but was defeated in a humiliating way by the relatively unknown international civil servant Martti Ahtisaari. Sorsa had collected inside his party a small, but significant amount of enemies over the years. They were among others Erkki Tuomioja, Lasse Lehtinen and Matti Ahde. Sorsa replaced Ahde as Speaker in 1989. They all became influential forces behind Martti Ahtisaari campaign.
Kalevi Sorsa died of cancer on January 16, 2004 at his home in Helsinki. He participated in discussion of social politics until his last days. His last column was published posthumously.
The Kalevi Sorsa Foundation is a social democratic think tank named in his honour.
Read more about this topic: Kalevi Sorsa
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