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12-05-2023
HELSINKI: Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and her husband, Markus Raikkonen, are to divorce after 19 years together, Marin announced on Instagram on Wednesday.
“We have filed for divorce together. We are grateful for 19 years together and our beloved daughter,” Marin wrote in an Instagram story.
“We are still best friends, cool to each other and loving parents. We will continue to spend time together as a family and with each other,” she added.
Marin and Raikkonen, a businessman and former professional footballer, were married in 2020, according to Finland’s public broadcaster, YLE.
The announcement comes after Marin lost Finland’s parliamentary election in April, with opposition right-wing National Coalition Party (NCP) claiming victory in a tightly fought contest.
She is currently serving as caretaker prime minister until a new coalition government can be formed.
Though considered a millennial role model for progressive new leaders by fans around the globe, at home she has faced criticism for her partying and her government’s high public expenditure.
While she remains very popular among many Finns, particularly young moderates, she antagonized some conservatives with high levels of spending on pensions and education.
Marin’s rise to the top of Finnish politics was meteoric.
The first member of her family to attend university, she entered politics at 20 and quickly moved up the ranks of the center-left Social Democratic Party.
She then became the world’s youngest prime minister when she took office in 2019 at the age 34.
Most notable of Marin’s foreign policy actions has been her push, along with President Sauli Niinisto, for the country to make a watershed policy U-turn by seeking NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That process is now almost complete, with Helsinki expected to join within days after all the Western defense alliance’s 30 members approved the accession. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
