Finland's Government Just Made Its Most Popular Move: to Resign

(Bloomberg) -- Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipila last week made the most popular decision of his four-year term: he resigned.

A poll by the country’s biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, showed six in ten Finns backed his choice. That’s almost double the cabinet’s highest approval rating, 36 percent, attained shortly after it took office in 2015.

Many of the government’s policies have been highly divisive: budget cuts, a labor pact to boost competitiveness that made people work more for less, penalizing the jobless people who fail to show they are actively seeking to improve their situation, and opening up taxis to increased competition. Resistance to its failed reform on health and social care was widespread, also within the governing parties.

The Kantar TNS survey, published on Tuesday, had 1,084 responses through an Internet panel and a margin of error of about 3 percentage points. The government continues in a caretaker role until a new coalition is formed after a general election on April 14.

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