HELSINKI – Finland’s Social Democratic party on Sunday voted Sanna Marin as the country’s prime minister, making the 34-year-old the youngest ever to hold the position in the whole world.
Marin will replace Antti Rinne who resigned last Tuesday after losing support of the coalition partner Centre Party over his handling of a postal strike.
“We have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust. I have never thought about my age or gender, I think of the reasons I got into politics and those things for which we have won the trust of the electorate,” Marin is quoted by AFP as saying shortly after the election on Sunday night.
Marin will join Ukraine’s Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, 35, as some of the world’s youngest leaders.
Rinne left her job last week after several weeks of political crisis over a plan to cut wages for 700 postal workers.
Finland’s postal service withdrew the reform plans in November after widespread strikes, but questions emerged over whether or not Rinne had previously endorsed the cutbacks, leading to the Centre Party declaring it had lost its trust in the prime minister last Monday.
Parliament is expected to formally swear in the new prime minister on Tuesday.
