Sat, 24 May, 2014 12:06:10 AM FTimes-STT Report, May 24  Demonstrators are trying to pull down the fence in front of the Parliament building in Helsinki on Friday. Photo – Lehtikuva. More than one thousand people staged demonstrations in Helsinki on Friday protesting against the activities of the five-party alliance government, particularly the fiscal policy decision of cutting expenditures.
The protest was organised under the banner ‘Nyt saa riittää’ (‘Now that’s enough’), where the demonstrators were found to bear various banners and festoons, some of them inscribed with abusive words against Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen.
The police said about 1,200 demonstrators took to the streets in Helsinki and some of them gathered in front of the parliament building.
The demonstrators pulled down the riot fence erected about 20 metres from the building and about 100 people took part in the scuffle, said the police.
Photo – Lehtikuva. Their actions prompted the riot police to swarm around the steps of the parliament building. The demonstration, however, proceeded peacefully after the episode at the fence, said the police.
Kike Elomaa, a lawmaker of the opposition Perussusomalaiset arrived to address the demonstrators, but their chanting disrupted her short speech.
Terttu Savola, the leader of Köyhien Asialla (For the Poor) party said she had come precisely because the suffering of the poor was enough.
Earlier, on April 25, about one thousand people staged a demonstration in Helsinki on the same issue.
The police used pepper spray to disperse the agitators as they tried to break through a police barrier and approach the parliament building that time.
Earlier, during the end of last month, a demonstration organised under the same banner in Helsinki led to scuffle with the riot police.
The agitators brought out procession in Helsinki on Friday against the government fiscal adjustment decision. Photo – Lehtikuva. The protesters had tried to force their way to the parliament building but could not break through the police barrier.
Dissatisfaction with the current political state and the direction it was taking was cited in the social media as the reason for the April’s protest.
The Finnish government reached a structural reform scheme in August last year, aiming to tackle the “sustainability gap” in the state budget. The reform included cutting government spending, reducing family benefits and raising the effective retirement age, among others.
In March, the government decided to launch a further cost-saving package to cut a total of 2.3 billion euros (about 3.17 billion US dollars) by 2018, including slashes in child benefits and earnings-related unemployment security payments.
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