Nothing says November like elections. Members for the HYY Representative Council were elected last week and the results are in. All members of the Student Union – that is, most students studying at Helsinki – were eligible to vote in the elections that saw the political groupings, as opposed to the non-political ones, make gains. HYY Greens remains the biggest political group in the Council, with nine seats while the Independent Left is close behind with eight seats, up from five last term. The right-leaning Edistykselliset also managed to increase their support from three to six seats, making it the third-largest political group.
Despite the surge of these political groupings, the biggest group in the Council continues to be the politically non-partisan HYAL, the Group of Subject Organisations. They lost two seats, however, and with eighteen seats currently, hold a mere one-seat lead over the HYY Greens and Independent Left alliance.
The results seem to confirm the often assumed green/left persuasion of the student body. It is also interesting to note that the political groups managed to increase their support while the non-partisan ones saw theirs decrease. Obviously the politics done in the Council and the divisions that exist there aren’t exactly mirroring national-level politics in all respects, but the discrepancies that exist between the composition of the council and our national parliament are noteworthy, especially during a time of severe budget cuts inflicted on higher education, and the University of Helsinki in particular. The next two-year term will show what these political groups can do in the Council and maybe even outside it.
Full results of the elections are available here: http://vaalitulos.hyy.fi/2016/result.html