Centre Party (Finnish: Suomen Keskusta, Kesk; Swedish: Centern i Finland) is a centrist and agrarian political party in Finland. It is one of the four largest political parties in the country, along with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the National Coalition Party and the True Finns (PS). Currently the Centre Party has 50 seats in the Finnish Parliament (2007). Its chairman is Mari Kiviniemi, who replaced the previous chairman Matti Vanhanen as the Prime Minister of Finland on 22 June 2010.
The Finnish Centre Party is the mother organisation of Finnish Centre Youth, Finnish Centre Women, Finnish Centre Students and some smaller political organisations in Finland.
Its political influence is greatest in small and rural municipalities, where it often holds a majority of the seats in the municipal councils. Decentralisation is the policy that is most characteristic of the Centre Party.
The party was founded in 1906 as a movement of citizens in the Finnish countryside. Before Finnish independence, political power in Finland was centralized in the capital and to the estates of the realm. The centralization gave space for a new political movement. In 1906 were founded two agrarian movements which in 1908 merged into one political party: the Agrarian League or Maalaisliitto. An older, related movement was the temperance movement, which had overlapping membership and which gave future Agrarian League activists experience in working in an organization.
From the very beginning of its presence the party has supported the idea of decentralisation. At the dawn of Finnish independence the party supported republicanism as opposed to a monarchy backed by conservative social forces.
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