Keskisarja considered challenging Purra for party leadership

Finns Party deputy chair Teemu Keskisarja considered challenging incumbent chair Riikka Purra at the party conference in 2025, Yle reports. He describes the decision and his relationship with the party in his newly published book, My Life in Parliament.

Keskisarja says he had not even considered seeking a leadership position before spring 2025. He describes his decision in a chapter titled “Amok”, a word whose roots are in the languages of Southeast Asia and which refers to sudden, indiscriminate and murderous behaviour.

He identifies defiance, unpredictability and insubordination as his offences. Among his weaknesses, he says, is that he cannot obey “bosses younger than himself and more female, or old men either”.

Keskisarja says he fell out of favour with the party leadership after supporting the consideration of a citizens’ initiative seeking tighter funding for Yle. Party discipline would have required him to take the opposite position.

The parliamentary group issued him a warning.

“My offence was as stupid as pushing a referee after the incident. I continued barking from the sidelines. To the league’s disciplinary body, I said something about ‘licking the rectum of the National Coalition Party’,” Keskisarja writes.

He says phrases such as “he is not a team player” and “anti-party activity” circulated ominously in the dressing room.

Supporters encouraged a leadership challenge

Keskisarja says the Finns Party had small networks and that he had few acquaintances within the party. However, the first-term MP had gained visibility through his speeches in Parliament and his participation in the 612 event on Finnish Independence Day in 2024. Far-right activists have also participated in the annual 612 torchlight procession.

A party activist from Tampere asked Keskisarja to enter the leadership contest. He says the idea of specifically challenging Purra came from a support group formed to back his candidacy.

Keskisarja says he wondered whether he could challenge the incumbent chair.

“A closely fought duel was within my possibilities. The Finns Party is the only party where members directly elect the leadership every two years, without authorisation from local associations. A disgruntled membership would accept an even crazier challenger,” he writes.

Based on the contacts he received, Keskisarja concluded that getting party conference delegates to attend required the vote to have the highest possible stakes.

He says his supporters began circulating rumours that he would stand.

“The party office went into a frenzy. Who, how and why?”

Despite the rumours, Keskisarja says he kept his preliminary plans to himself and confided only in his trusted parliamentary colleague Onni Rostila of the Finns Party.

The party’s defeat in the 2025 municipal and regional elections sealed his decision to enter the contest. In the municipal elections, the party’s support nearly halved to 7.6 per cent. Its support also fell in the regional elections.

Rostila considered Keskisarja’s move into the party leadership inevitable but opposed an “amok charge” against Purra.

“It would result in terrible bloodshed and permanent bodily injuries for the party, whichever way the vote went,” Keskisarja writes.

Keskisarja says he considered what he actually disagreed with Purra about. They share views on both immigration and the economy.

“We differed in language and in the weapons of the culture war. Those abstractions did not make Purra a target for an amok attack,” he writes.

According to Keskisarja, an unexpected victory would probably have brought down the government. He says he enjoys the “unreserved distrust” of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the National Coalition Party and Swedish People’s Party Education Minister Anders Adlercreutz.

Keskisarja says he trusted his ability to serve as party chair and minister. That was not the issue.

“In the end, I concluded that the first deputy chairmanship was enough. I did not want to replace Purra as Purra, or become the caliph in place of the caliph in a collapsing caliphate,” he writes.

Rantanen defeated in deputy chair contest

The contest for first deputy chair took place in June 2025 in Lahti, between Interior Minister Mari Rantanen of the Finns Party and Keskisarja.

To Keskisarja and his supporters, the reason for the incumbent minister’s decision to run appeared clear.

“Purra asked her trusted woman to block Keskisarja. The party leadership did not want a dissenting voice among them, which is what I had declared myself to be,” he writes.

On the evening before the vote, Keskisarja says he sang the hymn “In the Palm of God’s Hand” to Rostila. He describes religion as important to him, says he belongs to Parliament’s Bible study group and has tried to take part in its activities weekly.