 The National Coalition Party had conducted a vigorous election campaign, demanding to be allowed to re-join the government after thirteen years in the opposition.They reaped the benefits of this campaign, and of the usual decrease of long-time governing parties' support, by picking up twelve seats and becoming the second-largest party.Their leader, Harri Holkeri, negotiated with the various parliamentary parties and concluded in April 1979 that no stable majority centre-right government could be formed, because the traditional bourgeois parties (the Centre Party, the National Coalition Party, the Swedish People's Party and the Liberal People's Party) considered the Finnish Christian League and Finnish Rural Party too ideologically extreme or old-fashioned to become reliable coalition partners.