Fact-Check: Does This Photo of Young Women Depict Finland’s New Ministers?
Claim: Picture of four young women under the age of 35 who posed for a photo together, is being touted as officials of Finland’s New Government.
Full Text: The photo of the young girls had a caption and a rider at the bottom of it that states, “youngest leadership in the world.”
The caption reads, “Meet the new Government of Finland. From left to right: Minister of Education Li Andersson (32), Minister of Finance Katri Kulmuni (32), Prime Minister Sanna Marin (34) and Minister of Internal Affairs Maria Ohisalo (34).”
Verification: PRNigeria conducted a reverse image search of the picture, revealing that the photo has been on the internet since 2019 – about three years ago. On further investigation, PRNigeria found that the same image was uploaded on Instagram in March 2019 by popular Nepalese TikTok twin-stars Deepa and Damanta and Prisma and Princy via the handle @deepadamanta.
Google keyword search also revealed that the claim had earlier been debunked here, here, here and here.
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However, it should be noted that in 2019 Finland made news for electing the world youngest serving prime minster Sanna Marin, who was 34 at the time and also for having a very young cabinet dominated by women.
Nevertheless, details of the women mentioned in the tweet are in isolation correct but the images does not match the names.
The Finish government cabinet composed of women was shared in a tweet in December 2019 on the verified twitter handle of Finland’s government.
The women officials were identified as Sanna Marin; Prime Minster of Finland, Katri Kulmuni; member of Finnish Parliament, Maria Ohisalo; now member of Finnish Parliment and former minister of interior, Li Adersson; Finland Minister of Education, and Anna Maja; Minister of Justice.
Conclusion/Verdict: the four women in the photo who were actually Tik Tok stars from Nepal, were incorrectly identified, thereby making the claim false.
