HELSINKI, Finland -- President Mauno Koivisto failed Monday to win the majority in the national election, forcing the presidential contest into the electoral college for selection of a winner in two weeks, nearly complete returns showed.
Koivisto won 47.9 percent of the vote, according to official returns based on 99 percent of the ballots cast.
'I am a little bit disappointed,' said Koivisto, who was expected to prevail in balloting by the electoral college. 'I had hoped for a slightly better result. The campaign has been perfect.'
Koivisto launched his campaign three weeks ago, assured by opinion polls he would win a bare majority of the vote in the weekend balloting and be elected Monday to another six-year term as political leader of this neutral nation bordering the Soviet Union.
Under a new system, the electorate was able to vote directly for a presidential candidate. Since no candidate won a majority, the electoral college will decide the winner Feb. 15.
A total of 1,913 politicians were running for the 301 electoral seats in a race whose outcome was expected to be known Tuesday.
Turnout among the 4 million eligible voters was estimated at 83 percent, slightly below the record 86 percent when Koivisto swept to his first six-year term in 1982.
The near-complete results gave Center Party leader Paavo Vayrynen 20.1 percent, Conservative Prime Minister Harri Holkeri 18.1 percent, Eurocommunist candidate Kalevi Kivisto 10.5 percent and Jouko Kajanoja, a hard-line communist, 1.4 percent.
Koivisto made Holkeri prime minister of a Social Democrat-Conservative government coalition after last year's parliamentary election. Vayrynen, 41, and Holkeri, 51, were jockeying for position in the campaign for the 1994 election, when Koivisto, 64, is expected to retire.
Vayrynen, who was shut out from the goverment by Koisvisto, demanded that the government resign following the election.
Opinion polls last week showed Koivisto, a Social Democrat, steadying on 52 percent of the vote and outdistancing all of his challengers, who support the foreign policy of the Western-style democracy.
Koivisto campaigned to reduce his own power in domestic politics and for the presidency to be limited to two terms.
He has kept a lower profile in Finnish affairs than his legendary predecessor, the late Urho Kekkonen, who fathered Finland's close relations with Moscow during 25 consecutive years as president.
