History
The party was founded as a result of a merger between the Finnish People's Democratic League (SKDL), Democratic Alternative (an orthodox pro-Soviet communist party), the Finnish Women's Democratic League (SNDL) and the Communist Party of Finland (SKP). The founding meeting was held in April 1990 in Helsinki, following the publishing of the April Declaration, which emphasised various ideals.
The party's short history has been characterised by internal disputes and bickering, as it was formed by people with very different views on society. There have been several defections from the Left Alliance to the Social Democratic Party and the newly formed Communist Party of Finland. In 2005, the party's former secretary and Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions's assistant head Matti Viialainen formed a society to promote merger between the two largest Finnish left-wing political parties, the Left Alliance and the Social Democrats. This caused an outrage within the Left Alliance, and Viialainen was condemned for wanting to break up the party. Viialainen would subsequently leave the party and run for parliament on the Social Democrat ticket in 2007.
In 2006, the party's leader Suvi-Anne Siimes announced her resignation from the post, and the party, as a result of long-standing feuds with the leftist section of the party. On May 13, 2006, Martti Korhonen was elected as the new party leader. He was followed by Paavo Arhinmäki in June 2009, following the party's bad performance in the 2009 EU parliamentary election.
Read more about this topic: Left Alliance (Finland)
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“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
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