I’ll start with a short introduction and eventually I’m hoping to add some real entries in English to my blog. I’ve put up this blog because I’m a candidate in the municipal elections in Turku in october 2008 for the Left Alliance party.
My name is Markus Varjonen, I’m 30 years old, and I work at the Åbo Akademi university doing a PhD in psychology. During the past year I’ve also worked as a school psychologist, and that’s what I think I’ll eventually end up doing.
I decided to join the Left Alliance after the last municipal elections four years ago after I had realized that I do want to try to make an impact on how Turku is governed. I don’t consider myself to be a ”born politician”, but I am an idealist who thinks that politics should be about making our common environment as good as possible for as many as possible. This includes future generations as well, so that we should try to anticipate forthcoming issues and problems (e.g. lack of resources) by taking responsibility for our actions now instead of doing nothing and hoping for a miracle fix to emerge in the future. Which of course is an easy thing to say but not always an easy thing to do, as these issues tend to be extremely complicated. In my own mind, one reason people should vote for me in the election is that my idealism is not black or white, I think I am quite good at being open-minded and trying to evaluate all options when forming an opinion.
During the past years I’ve been very active within the Left Alliance, and at present I am the vice-president of the party organization in Turku. At present 11 out of the 67 councillors in Turku represent the Left Alliance, which means that we are the third biggest group in the council. I have been very impressed by many of our councillors, who are doing a great job in trying to make sure it’s not just the voices of rich and influential businessmen that are being heard, not always an easy job. In these 2008 elections I’m hoping that some of the competent young candidates for the Left Alliance will get elected in order to keep our organization vital and living, and in order to make sure representative democracy works as it should. I don’t know if i count as a young candidate at 30, so in my case I have to talk just about a competent fairly young candidate when trying to get people to vote for me…
Four years ago I had no background in party politics, and after the elections I was presented with the opportunity to try to resurrect the then ”sleeping” swedish-speaking local branch of the Left Alliance, Åbo Gröna Vänster (ÅGV). I was the president of ÅGV for three years before Li Andersson this year took over the responsibility with me continuing as vice-president, and one thing that I am very pleased with is that ÅGV now is alive and well bothin politics within Turku as well as in politics within the Åbo Akademi. ÅGV is a swedish-speaking branch, but I would love to see us become a minority-language branch of the Left Alliance, so if you don’t speak Finnish or Swedish but are interested in what the Left Alliance does in Turku, please contact me or Li Andersson and we’ll send you more information about ÅGV and invite you to a meeting. My email is mvarjonen@gmail.com.
Please do contact me if you’d like to comment or discuss local politics in Turku and the elections here. If you like discussing politics, there’s also a good chance of meeting me in Kerttulin Kievari or Bar Bristol here in Turku, where I every now and then spend the evenings with friends of mine. Apart from spending time with friends, other interests that I have are litterature, football, running, and music. I think that’s enough of the basic information about me for now, but, again, don’t hesitate to contact me if you are interested in getting involved in ÅGV or if you want to discuss my political views.
