In the YLE election start special, the leaders of current parliamentary parties were present and in good humor. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the shooting star of the recent polls, Timo Soini. Soini, sweating and red, drinking lots of water (hung over?) was wearing a blue shirt two inches too small and looked uncomfortable throughout.
Questions started off rather softball'ish, with Soini scoring lots of easy points with answers like "we have lots of good candidates, in every electoral district" and "my favorite color is black on white and red". When the time came for him to comment on an actual issue he didn't fail to fail miserably. His answer consisted of confusedly comparing the Greece bailout to "a baseball cap fitted on a melon, then an apple", which prompted every single panelist and host to call him out on not actually answering the question. He then tried to clarify his stance by saying "they will run out of bananas and liquorice sooner or later" and this my friends, is a man with a Masters' degree from a University I kid you not.
The easiest comeback of the night was from the Green Alliance leader Sinnemäki, who said she didn't understand what melons and baseball caps have to do with the issue at hand, getting a few laughs from the audience. Soini, embarrassed, stayed mostly quiet for the rest of the debate rather than rattling off slogan after slogan as per usual. Other good points came in form of the quotable "responsibility is a career choice", from National Coalition's Jyrki Katainen, and "only a healthy county can take care of its sick" from Social Democrat Urpilainen.
