Later Years and Death
In later years of his career, Sorsa went into his Social Democratic Party's primary elections as candidate for president in 1993, but was defeated in a humiliating way by the relatively unknown international civil servant Martti Ahtisaari. Sorsa had collected inside his party a small, but significant amount of enemies over the years. They were among others Erkki Tuomioja, Lasse Lehtinen and Matti Ahde. Sorsa replaced Ahde as Speaker in 1989. They all became influential forces behind Martti Ahtisaari campaign.
Kalevi Sorsa died of cancer on January 16, 2004 at his home in Helsinki. He participated in discussion of social politics until his last days. His last column was published posthumously.
The Kalevi Sorsa Foundation is a social democratic think tank named in his honour.
Read more about this topic: Kalevi Sorsa
Famous quotes containing the words years and/or death:
“Uncle Matthew’s four years in France and Italy between 1914 and 1918 had given him no great opinion of foreigners. “Frogs,” he would say, “are slightly better than Huns or Wops, but abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends.””
—Nancy Mitford (1904–1973)
“Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, “Go to sleep by yourselves.” And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)