For a few months now I've been watching how the "Tony Halme Saga" continues. Most of you have probably never heard of him but he is a Finnish parlamentarian who will be soon facing a trial on rather numerous charges. The thing that prompted me to write this is his comment from yesterday where he stated that the whole affair "hadn't damaged his credibility as a member of parliament". (I kind of agree, since in my opinion he didn't have any credibility to start with). But anyway, I'll outline here the sequence of events and I'd like your opinion whether a politician who behaved like he did could have a hope for future career in your countries.
First, as a general background. Halme is a former boxer (not good enough to be real professional). Some of the US readers may have encountered him when he was a professional wrestler in WWF (or whatever it was then) for about a year under the pseudonym "Ludwig Borga". I don't know the details of his professional career, but I'm under the impression that apart from being a boxer and wrestler he has mostly been a bouncer.
In our last parlamentary election he managed to get a seat. His campaign theme was mostly on anti-foreigner, anti-homosexual, anti-criminal, anti-drug, "choose a real man instead of crooked politicians" line.
The events for which he will face charges happened few months ago. The outline of the events have been presented in media like this:
- He went to a bar, took a lot of alcohol, hormones and some amphetamine
- drove home, under influence of said chemicals
- had a row with his wife
- grabbed his unlicenced (and thus illegal) handgun and fired few shots at something without hitting anything particularly important
- collapsed down
- spent next three weeks in intensive care unit of a hospital recovering from severe poisoning resulting from his chemical mixture.
In addition, when police started to investigate this affair they found a huge stash of hormones from his home. It is legal to have small amounts of them for personal use here, but traficking them is a crime.
The outline doesn't necessarily reflect thruthfully the chain of events. Halme has admitted taking alcohol and hormones as well as firing the unlicenced gun and he claims that someone spiked his drink with the amphetamine. He doesn't admit the DUI bit. He also claims that the hormone stash was all for his personal use, even though there were thousands of capsules.
Well, what do you say, could a politician hope for a career after similar incident in your countries?
First, as a general background. Halme is a former boxer (not good enough to be real professional). Some of the US readers may have encountered him when he was a professional wrestler in WWF (or whatever it was then) for about a year under the pseudonym "Ludwig Borga". I don't know the details of his professional career, but I'm under the impression that apart from being a boxer and wrestler he has mostly been a bouncer.
In our last parlamentary election he managed to get a seat. His campaign theme was mostly on anti-foreigner, anti-homosexual, anti-criminal, anti-drug, "choose a real man instead of crooked politicians" line.
The events for which he will face charges happened few months ago. The outline of the events have been presented in media like this:
- He went to a bar, took a lot of alcohol, hormones and some amphetamine
- drove home, under influence of said chemicals
- had a row with his wife
- grabbed his unlicenced (and thus illegal) handgun and fired few shots at something without hitting anything particularly important
- collapsed down
- spent next three weeks in intensive care unit of a hospital recovering from severe poisoning resulting from his chemical mixture.
In addition, when police started to investigate this affair they found a huge stash of hormones from his home. It is legal to have small amounts of them for personal use here, but traficking them is a crime.
The outline doesn't necessarily reflect thruthfully the chain of events. Halme has admitted taking alcohol and hormones as well as firing the unlicenced gun and he claims that someone spiked his drink with the amphetamine. He doesn't admit the DUI bit. He also claims that the hormone stash was all for his personal use, even though there were thousands of capsules.
Well, what do you say, could a politician hope for a career after similar incident in your countries?