Kanerva 'Finnished' Over Texting Scandal

As we noted the other day, obsessive texting can be hazardous to your political career.

Now he's gone.

Finnish Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva was forced to quit his job on Tuesday after he admitted bombarding a stripper with mobile phone text messages of a sexual nature, his party announced on Tuesday.

The conservative National Coalition Party appointed Alexander Stubb, a 40-year-old member of the European parliament, as his successor, after weeks of speculation about Kanerva's private life and his political future.

Party leader Jyrki Katainen finally withdrew his support for Kanerva on Tuesday, saying the SMS scandal had tainted the foreign minister's credibility.

"Kanerva has not kept his promise to not let his private life interfere with his political" life, Katainen told reporters in Helsinki.

Kanerva, 60, had made headlines for several weeks after he sent around 200 text messages to 29-year-old erotic dancer Johanna Tukiainen, whom he met at the end of January, and her sister.

The minister had repeatedly denied sending the messages, but finally admitted to doing so on March 10 on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels.

The gossip magazine Hymy on Tuesday published 24 of his SMS messages, some of which contained flirtatious and sexually suggestive content.

One of them read: "Do you want to do it in some exciting place? What could it be?"

Piddling stuff next to the scandals we get here.

When Too Much Texting Becomes a Problem

Compared to good old-fashioned American sex scandals like those involving the disgraced Eliot Spitzer and McGreevey family sandwiches, the Finns seem like real pikers.

All this involves is a politician apparently obsessively texting messages to a stripper.

What's the harm in that?

Finnish minister in trouble over text messages to dancer

Finland's foreign minister faced calls for his resignation on Saturday after a tabloid newspaper published a suggestive text message he had sent to an erotic dancer.

Ilkka Kanerva sent about 200 text messages to Johanna Tukiainen, 29, and at first said they were related to her performing at his 60th birthday party.

On Friday he admitted the messages were not totally appropriate.

"I would not present them in Sunday School, but they are not totally out of line either," the daily Helsingin Sanomat quoted him as saying.

The Ilta-Sanomat daily said that in one of the messages Kanerva had asked Tukiainen: "Would you like to do it in an exotic place? Where could it be?"

When Kanerva was asked whether 'it' referred to sex, he only said it was obvious that his message was an answer to an earlier question, Finnish News Agency STT said.

Fellow parliamentarian Tuija Nurmi, also of the conservative party, has said Kanerva should resign, and opposition leader Eero Heinaluoma said the situation cannot continue as it is now.

Conservative Party chairman Jyrki Katainen said he had confidence in Kanerva but his actions had been rash.

Finnish TV station MTV3 said it had heard from unnamed sources that Kanerva's party has been preparing for his resignation. Kanerva insisted he would stay in his job.

Tukiainen, who has posed nude in magazines and is the leader of the Scandinavian Dolls erotic dance troupe, first sold the text messages to Hymy magazine, and then sought a court injunction to stop their publication. A Helsinki court rejected the request.

Kanerva can't quite brush this off as a one-time thing, however.

This is not the first time Kanerva has been in trouble over his mobile phone use. In 2005, when he was the deputy speaker of parliament, he bombarded two models with text messages.

Thanks to the magic of this Internet thingy, we located some images of the lovely Miss Tukiainen here. I might need to get down to South Beach again sometime soon.