Eldritch
04-14-2011, 04:10 PM
God bless this whore-mongering old Belgian goat. :thumb001:
Finland needs more immigrants? Absolutely -- immigrants like Freddy.
Freddy van Wonterghem sees no contradiction between being originally Belgian and standing for the True Finns.
http://www.65degreesnorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/freddy.jpg
Freddy van Wonterghem
Why would a foreigner – even if they have acquired citizenship – want to become a MP for True Finns? Isn’t it Finland’s most nationalistic, even anti-foreigner party?
Maybe so. But Freddy van Wonterghem (56) is the man who journalists are asked to contact whenever they ask the party about immigration issues. He even makes light of his peculiar status. His election slogan in the 2009 European Parliamentary Election was ‘Send an Immigrant Home;’ the European Parliament being in Belgium most of the time.
But since 1973, Freddy’s home has been Kotka on the southern coast. ‘I was a sailor in the merchant navy. I first came to Finland in 1972 and every third week we would spend five days in Kotka, where I now live. For the young Finnish girls, I was the exotic man from the south and for me they were the exotic girls from the north!’ he laughs.
‘So, in 1973 I came here on a three week holiday and, well, I have been here ever since!’ Freddy married a Finnish woman and then had to wait to get a residence permit.
‘There were very few foreigners back then. Very few of the Finns spoke English, though some of the older people did speak German which I can speak.’ Freddy’s native language is Dutch, which is very close to German.
Freddy managed to get work extremely rapidly. ‘There was a labour shortage in Finland at that time. My residence permit came through and I got a job working at a paper factory the next day!’ he recalls. ‘The factory boss spoke English but I was having to speak in Finnish for four or five hour shifts every day, so I quite quickly started to communicate in Finnish.’
Freddy got involved in politics almost by chance. ‘It was in 2003. The then Prime Minister, Paavo Lipponen, had made a speech saying that Finns should get used to foreigners and integrate to foreigners. I thought, “No. It should be the other way around!” and I wrote an opinion piece about it in the local newspaper.’
‘The Co-ordinator for immigrants in Kotka read this and she asked me to give a speech at a meeting about immigrants. People said to me that it was a really good speech and that I should go into politics! So I went on the internet and looked at different political parties and Perussuomalaiset was the only one whose manifesto I really understood.’
‘So I sent them my documentation. At that time they were a very small party. Nobody contacted me for six months and I thought, “Okay, they are not interested in me.” But then somebody rang me.’
Freddy stood as a council candidate in the 2004 elections, as a parliamentary candidate in the 2007 elections and was elected to the local council in the 2008 local election.
He doesn’t find it odd to be a foreigner – or naturalized Finn – in True Finns. ‘Of course, there are people in the party who are strongly against immigrants but in Finland nearly every party has people of that kind. Whenever people in the party want to talk about immigration, they contact me and I think that Finland does not have enough opportunities to integrate its immigrants.’
‘Also, when Finns use the word ‘immigrant,’ they’re not thinking of Freddy. They’re thinking of blacks and Muslims and, in the east of the country, Russians.’
Freddy emphasises that he has good relations with local Somalis and he wants to help them integrate. For Freddy, it is do-gooder politicians ‘who treat the Somalis like they are children’ who are often the problem, not the Somalis themselves. He refers to scandal in Kotka when it was revealed that Somalis were asking for Muslim-only swimming times at the pool. It turned out that this idea came from Finns working for the council. ‘The Somalis just wanted female-only times which some Finnish women wanted as well.’
In Freddy’s view, it is in the interests of foreigners that Finland is a good place for their children to live and this means that Finland should primarily ‘take care of its own people.’
And, in his view, True Finns are the only party genuinely in favour of preserving free speech and this, he thinks, benefits everybody. ‘I say what I think! Maybe people don’t like it. Maybe I don’t like it! But I say the truth.’
In Freddy’s native Flanders, there is a popular party to which some critics have compared True Finns: the anti-immigrant, Flemish independence seeking Vlaams Belang. Freddy is in two minds about the party. He has met their leaders and, ‘there are things I agree on. There are things I don’t agree on. Maybe I am between Vlaams Belang and the NVR (the New Flemish Alliance, a moderate conservative party).’
‘I think independence would be better for Flanders but, for myself, I live here in Finland so it’s not my problem anymore!’ he laughs.
Facts: True Finns (Perussuomalaiset)
True Finns was founded in 1995 from the remains of the Finnish Rural Party. Its predecessor split from the Agrarian League (now the Centre Party) in 1959 and was a populist, opposition movement to President Urho Kekkonen, with strong support amongst small farmers. The Finnish Rural Party was last part of the government in the early 1990s. In 1995, it collapsed down to just one MP out 200. In the 2007 election, under Timo Soini, it got four percent of the vote and 5 MPs but has recently rocketed in popularity, with some polls putting it in second place nationally. It wants tighter immigration laws, is anti-EU and wants to abolish mandatory Swedish in schools.
Link. (http://www.65degreesnorth.com/news/immigrant-or-‘true-finn’-freddy-says-he’s-both/)
Finland needs more immigrants? Absolutely -- immigrants like Freddy.
Freddy van Wonterghem sees no contradiction between being originally Belgian and standing for the True Finns.
http://www.65degreesnorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/freddy.jpg
Freddy van Wonterghem
Why would a foreigner – even if they have acquired citizenship – want to become a MP for True Finns? Isn’t it Finland’s most nationalistic, even anti-foreigner party?
Maybe so. But Freddy van Wonterghem (56) is the man who journalists are asked to contact whenever they ask the party about immigration issues. He even makes light of his peculiar status. His election slogan in the 2009 European Parliamentary Election was ‘Send an Immigrant Home;’ the European Parliament being in Belgium most of the time.
But since 1973, Freddy’s home has been Kotka on the southern coast. ‘I was a sailor in the merchant navy. I first came to Finland in 1972 and every third week we would spend five days in Kotka, where I now live. For the young Finnish girls, I was the exotic man from the south and for me they were the exotic girls from the north!’ he laughs.
‘So, in 1973 I came here on a three week holiday and, well, I have been here ever since!’ Freddy married a Finnish woman and then had to wait to get a residence permit.
‘There were very few foreigners back then. Very few of the Finns spoke English, though some of the older people did speak German which I can speak.’ Freddy’s native language is Dutch, which is very close to German.
Freddy managed to get work extremely rapidly. ‘There was a labour shortage in Finland at that time. My residence permit came through and I got a job working at a paper factory the next day!’ he recalls. ‘The factory boss spoke English but I was having to speak in Finnish for four or five hour shifts every day, so I quite quickly started to communicate in Finnish.’
Freddy got involved in politics almost by chance. ‘It was in 2003. The then Prime Minister, Paavo Lipponen, had made a speech saying that Finns should get used to foreigners and integrate to foreigners. I thought, “No. It should be the other way around!” and I wrote an opinion piece about it in the local newspaper.’
‘The Co-ordinator for immigrants in Kotka read this and she asked me to give a speech at a meeting about immigrants. People said to me that it was a really good speech and that I should go into politics! So I went on the internet and looked at different political parties and Perussuomalaiset was the only one whose manifesto I really understood.’
‘So I sent them my documentation. At that time they were a very small party. Nobody contacted me for six months and I thought, “Okay, they are not interested in me.” But then somebody rang me.’
Freddy stood as a council candidate in the 2004 elections, as a parliamentary candidate in the 2007 elections and was elected to the local council in the 2008 local election.
He doesn’t find it odd to be a foreigner – or naturalized Finn – in True Finns. ‘Of course, there are people in the party who are strongly against immigrants but in Finland nearly every party has people of that kind. Whenever people in the party want to talk about immigration, they contact me and I think that Finland does not have enough opportunities to integrate its immigrants.’
‘Also, when Finns use the word ‘immigrant,’ they’re not thinking of Freddy. They’re thinking of blacks and Muslims and, in the east of the country, Russians.’
Freddy emphasises that he has good relations with local Somalis and he wants to help them integrate. For Freddy, it is do-gooder politicians ‘who treat the Somalis like they are children’ who are often the problem, not the Somalis themselves. He refers to scandal in Kotka when it was revealed that Somalis were asking for Muslim-only swimming times at the pool. It turned out that this idea came from Finns working for the council. ‘The Somalis just wanted female-only times which some Finnish women wanted as well.’
In Freddy’s view, it is in the interests of foreigners that Finland is a good place for their children to live and this means that Finland should primarily ‘take care of its own people.’
And, in his view, True Finns are the only party genuinely in favour of preserving free speech and this, he thinks, benefits everybody. ‘I say what I think! Maybe people don’t like it. Maybe I don’t like it! But I say the truth.’
In Freddy’s native Flanders, there is a popular party to which some critics have compared True Finns: the anti-immigrant, Flemish independence seeking Vlaams Belang. Freddy is in two minds about the party. He has met their leaders and, ‘there are things I agree on. There are things I don’t agree on. Maybe I am between Vlaams Belang and the NVR (the New Flemish Alliance, a moderate conservative party).’
‘I think independence would be better for Flanders but, for myself, I live here in Finland so it’s not my problem anymore!’ he laughs.
Facts: True Finns (Perussuomalaiset)
True Finns was founded in 1995 from the remains of the Finnish Rural Party. Its predecessor split from the Agrarian League (now the Centre Party) in 1959 and was a populist, opposition movement to President Urho Kekkonen, with strong support amongst small farmers. The Finnish Rural Party was last part of the government in the early 1990s. In 1995, it collapsed down to just one MP out 200. In the 2007 election, under Timo Soini, it got four percent of the vote and 5 MPs but has recently rocketed in popularity, with some polls putting it in second place nationally. It wants tighter immigration laws, is anti-EU and wants to abolish mandatory Swedish in schools.
Link. (http://www.65degreesnorth.com/news/immigrant-or-‘true-finn’-freddy-says-he’s-both/)