Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has received prominent support: Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton published a photo on Twitter on Sunday that shows her dancing exuberantly.
“This is me in Cartagena, where I was for a meeting as Secretary of State,” Clinton commented on the picture taken in Colombia in April 2012. “Keep dancing @marinsanna,” she added to the Finnish Prime Minister, who is still having to defend herself against criticism.
The head of government addressed reacted a little later to Clinton’s backing. “Thank you Hillary Clinton,” Marin wrote on Twitter, captioning the message with a red heart.
Marin was criticized after a video leaked that showed her dancing and partying with friends. Comments heard in the video had been interpreted by some as referring to drugs. Marin had rejected corresponding interpretations and made a drug test to “dispel any suspicion”. The negative result of the test was published on Monday last week.
On Tuesday, Marin apologized for a photo taken at her Helsinki headquarters. The image, first published on the online service Tiktok and later shared by Finnish media, shows a Finnish influencer and another woman kissing and covering their bare breasts with a sign that reads “Finland” in English. “The photo is inappropriate, I apologize for that,” Marin said.
On Wednesday, however, Marin defended her right to privacy. At an event organized by her Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Lahti, she said, almost in tears, that she was only “human”. She also longs for fun sometimes. At the same time, she emphasized that she had not missed “a single day at work”.
The 36-year-old social democrat is the youngest prime minister in Finland’s history. When she took office in 2019, she was the youngest head of government in the world at the age of 34.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is 74 years old. She was Secretary of State under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. Democrats lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election.