Estonia’s leaders have apologized after the country’s interior minister called the 34-year-old prime minister of neighboring Finland, Sanna Marin, “a sales girl.”
The interior minister, Mart Helme, 70, who is the leader of the far-right Estonian Conservative People’s Party, made the comment about Ms. Marin during a Sunday morning radio talk show as part of a larger tirade against the center-left government of Finland, which he said was trying to destroy the country from within.
“Now we can see that a sales girl has become prime minister and some other street activist and uneducated person has also become a member of the government,” Mr. Helme said, according to a translation from Finland’s state broadcaster YLE. He claimed that Finland was led by “Reds” who “are now desperately trying to liquidate Finland, making it a Euro-province.”
Ms. Marin has spoken with pride about her working-class roots and about her rise from a low-income household to become the world’s youngest national leader. On Monday, she responded indirectly, on Twitter, to Mr. Helme’s comment.
“I am extremely proud of Finland,” she wrote. “Here, a child from a poor family can get educated and achieve many things in their lives. The cashier of a shop can become a prime minister.”
The insult drew an immediate response from others within the Estonian government, who scrambled to control the fallout. President Kersti Kaljulaid called her Finnish counterpart to apologize for the remarks on Monday, according to the Finnish state broadcaster, and Prime Minister Juri Ratas of Estonia wrote on Facebook that he had called Ms. Marin to say sorry.
Finland and Estonia share close cultural and linguistic ties, and also share a common neighbor in Russia, whose influence they have worked to oppose in the region.
Ms. Kaljulaid said in an interview with Postimees, an Estonian newspaper, that she felt Mr. Helme was a threat to the country’s security and feared his comments could alienate an important partner in the region.
“All of this affects our security network,” she said. “The survival of a small country, especially in a geopolitically active region, depends very much on what kinds of partners and allies we have and how they see us, similar or different.”
Mr. Ratas, who leads a center-right coalition government, wrote in his Facebook post of the “shared respect and agreement” between the two nations.
“We now need to put this behind us and move forward with important issues to the Estonian and Finnish governments, in our countries and in the European Union,” he added.
Several members of the opposition called for Mr. Helme to step down from government, and threatened a vote of no confidence if he did not leave his post.
“Mart Helme’s statements undermine Estonia’s international reputation,” Kaja Kallas, head of the Reform Party and leader of the opposition, said in a statement, according to the country’s state broadcaster.
“And this is no longer an internal political fight, but rather a situation that is shaming Estonia in general,” she added.
Mr. Helme offered his own apology of sorts, but maintained that his words were misinterpreted, the state broadcaster reported.
“That specific sentence about the Finnish prime minister, which you have interpreted as demeaning,” Mr. Helme said to reporters after a government meeting on Monday, “I have actually interpreted as complimentary — as recognition that someone can work their way up from a low social standing to the peak of politics.”
Ms. Marin became the world’s youngest prime minister last week, when her Social Democratic Party chose her to head a coalition government led by women. Four of the five women serving in the top government posts, including Ms. Marin, are under 35.
Ms. Marin was selected after a turbulent time that saw Prime Minister Antti Rinne resign over criticism from within the coalition of the handling of a postal workers’ strike.
The shift in leadership thrust Ms. Marin into the international spotlight, but she has waved away the focus on her age and instead emphasized her policy plans.
Mr. Rinne remains the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, but Ms. Marin is expected to challenge him for the party leadership at its convention this summer.
She first entered Parliament in 2015 and previously served as the minister of transport and communications. She is seen as left-leaning even within her party, with human rights, climate change and social welfare at the top of her political agenda.
While many on the left have applauded her appointment to prime minister as a symbol of growing gender and age equity in Finnish politics, it comes at an especially polarized time in the country.
In elections in April, the Social Democrats only narrowly edged out the right-wing, populist Finns Party.
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