Percy Mashaire, the writer is a journalist and teacher from Zimbabwe now living in Finland.

Petri Salo, MP of the Coalition Party and senior police officer, has sat in Arkadianmäki for eight years. During his parliamentary election campaign he fell into a trap laid for him by journalists in Vaasa and called Somalis drug users and work-shy. The MP´s racist expression created a small stir. In addition, a video clip about it could be seen on the YouTube website on the Internet. But Salo didn´t regret what he had said and was elected to Parliament for a third term. Welcome to multicultural Finland.

At the same time when Salo made his racist comment, Helsingin Sanomat had a poll conducted about immigration. Approximately 40 percent of the respondents were of the view that Finland shouldn´t receive more immigrants. If the survey holds true, this indicates that about two million Finns take a negative attitude towards immigration.

Why is that? The majority of the media didn´t dare to tackle the embarrassing question. The unpleasant task of replying was left to the Nyt supplement of Helsingin Sanomat, which, luckily, had the courage to interview three parliamentary candidates of the True Finns Party.

As expected, their views contained plenty of brutal, racist xenophobia. However, I was happy and relieved that finally somebody had broken a deep-rooted taboo in society. My biggest disappointment was focused on an academically educated candidate who made efforts to reject the ideas of these three candidates in an elitist, incredible and desperate way.

Defending racism and opposing multiculturalism are facts which are not worth hushing up and sweeping under the carpet. Unfortunately, things are often done like this. That´s why, problems tend to remain unsolved. Where has openness, a great virtue of Finns, disappeared to? Is there any truth in what the three candidates of the True Finns Party claim that the main parties have made a gentleman´s agreement on not bringing forward the immigrant issue before the election?

It is difficult to reject their claims. Again, immigration was clearly a marginal phenomenon in parliamentary elections. Traditionally, each party has set a few permanent immigrant candidates, one or two of whom in all have realistic possibilities to get into Parliament. Immigration is not seriously discussed in election debates. In fact, this issue wasn´t actively discussed until the windows of a kebab restaurant whose owner is an immigrant had been broken on a Friday night.

If Finland wishes to be a functionally multicultural society which is taken seriously, the subject of immigration has to be actively discussed and a society like this planned. In this way we can learn and avoid mistakes made by other countries. Finland has an advantage over the others because the number of immigrants is still small compared to the rest of the EU countries.

In a world which is rapidly becoming more and more global, immigration has become an inevitable phenomenon. Necessarily, the colour of the skin is no longer the biggest obstacle to live and work elsewhere than in the country one was born. In today´s Finland a dark-skinned bus driver, cash keeper or doctor at a health care centre no longer attracts as much attention as ten years ago. The roots of multiculturalism are already rooted here and fare well.

Still, a far-sighted vision and prompt action from decision makers and society are required for the process to succeed. One must speak a language which is understood in joints in Eastern Helsinki, fine restaurants in Westend as well as Hanko and Heinävesi. Why couldn´t a country, internationally renowned for its innovations and top technology, build a wonderful, multicultural society?