Marja Tiura
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Marja Johanna Tiura (born 20 August 1969 in Kylmäkoski, Finland) is a Finnish former Member of Parliament representing the National Coalition Party. She was first elected to parliament for the Pirkanmaa region in the 1999 general election, and retained her seat in the 2003 and 2007 elections. She lost her seat in the 2011 general election. She has also served as a locally elected politician on the Tampere Municipal Authority from 2000 to 2008. She was local party secretary from 1996 to 1999. Tiura has made headlines in Finland in 2009 and 2010 for coming under parliamentary and police investigation for allegedly taking bribes from significant business enterprises led by Kyösti Kakkonen of the KMS Group and Arto Merisalo of the Nova Group. The accusation is that she received this money so that she would become an undeclared lobbyist for their own business concerns.[1] In the end the accusations did not lead to charges.
Tiura graduated from New Braunfels High School, New Braunfels, Texas, USA, in 1987, and from Toijala High School in 1989.[citation needed] She graduated from Tampere Business College, where she studied business and administration, in 1992. She studied public relations at Päivölä Training College in 1996 and completed a master's degree in business administration at the University of Tampere in 1999.
Political career
Under the Finnish electoral system of proportional representation, Tiura was elected to the Finnish parliament in the 1999 General election with 5288 votes. In the 2003 General election, she received 10,686 votes and in the 2007 General election 17,577 votes, which was the highest number of votes for any candidate in the Pirkanmaa electoral region, the fourth highest in the entire country, and the highest garnered by a female candidate. Regardless of the voter popularity, Tiura was not chosen in the ministerial negotiations between the coalition members of the incoming government to receive a ministerial portfolio, on the grounds that despite popular public support she is considered a political lightweight who is unable to work with others, pointing, for instance, to her high turnover of parliamentary assistants.[2]
In 2007-2011 Tiura worked in the parliament as the first deputy chairman of the National Coalition Party's parliamentary group and chairman of the Committee on Future. She was also a member of the finance committee.
Tiura was not re-elected in the 2011 election.