Centre Party chair and former prime minister Mari Kiviniemi told YLE that the situation has changed radically in the last few weeks.
“It looks as if the country will not get a government without Centre Party participation, so we are ready to take responsibility,” said Kiviniemi.
Kiviniemi said that it would be good for the government to include both the party with the most seats in parliament, the National Coalition, and the biggest winner of the election, the True Finns.
The Centre chair declined to take a position on whether the Centre would join a government if the lead negotiator was the SDP's Jutta Urpilainen. All parliamentary groups' leaders will discuss the state of government formation talks under Katainen's leadership tomorrow.
Kiviniemi believes that the new government should be formed soon, as a caretaker administration cannot make political decisions.
Soini needs more time
The True Finns, for their part, will now conduct a survey into the European policies of what party chair Timo Soini describes as 'the old parties', to see how much they differ from the True Finns'. He does not anticipate the results to be ready on Tuesday, and will not answer the invitation to join government talks until it is complete. That is likely to be later in the week.
“We’ll calmly consider the situation,” said Soini. “Of course this country needs a government, so we will go through these European issues one more time.”
Soini promised that his research will be ready this week. The discussions will take place out of the glare of publicity.
“Now I will clarify the background, in the background,” said Soini. “There won’t be any public negotiations.”
