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Estonia Political Briefing: Kaleidoscope As Internal Politics E-MAP Foundation MTÜ

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Estonia Political Briefing: Kaleidoscope As Internal Politics E-MAP Foundation MTÜ ISSN: 2560-1601 Vol. 24, No. 1 (EE) Dec 2019 Estonia political briefing: Kaleidoscope as internal politics E-MAP Foundation MTÜ 1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11. +36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01 Kaleidoscope as internal politics When a provincial football team gets promoted from a lower division to the country’s highest league, its first year that is spent competing with the game’s more experienced range of squads is always eventful, but rarely successful. As a very common finale, the newly promoted team, regardless of the excitement associated with a couple of initial games, is to be relegated and has to go back to where it had come from, only a season ago. Keeping in mind this metaphorical setting, for the Republic of Estonia it has just been the first full year, during which the country has been ‘playing’ in the international community of nation’s most reputable ‘league’. In 2019, Estonia has been getting accustomed to its newly adopted status of a country with a centennial-long statehood. For a small European nation of 1.3 million people, it is a massive achievement to be able to survive the world’s most devastating war, few occupations and deportations, and a loss of about 5% of its internationally recognised territory, having recovered from those dark historic periods as a full Member State of the EU and NATO and proudly celebrating its 100th anniversary in the best economic shape ever recorded. At the same time, almost all major celebrations took place in 2018, while, for the Estonian Government, the following year had to be predictably all about making sure that the country’s new reputable status would not only be about reaching a respectable age. By the end of the year, giving a big interview to Postimees, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid underscored that, whilst her country had plenty of successes to be proud of, “there are [also] worrying prospects” and “[l]ess than beautiful seeds have been sown this year and we do not know the flowers they will bloom”1. Getting back to the aforementioned sporting metaphor, in order to solidify its place in a premier league of nations, the Estonian democracy needed to show its strength to withstand a number of serious crises, including those, which Estonian political elites skilfully ‘craft’ for themselves. There would be no better (say, more challenging) year for a well-functioning liberal democracy like Estonia to engage all of its effective mechanisms in a positive battle against destructive populism in a post-truth historic period then the year of two consecutive parliamentary elections, for both the national parliament Riigikogu and the European Parliament. To concentrate on the country’s internal politics, let us leave the geo-strategic turbulence-generating international factors (for example, the US-China ‘conversation’ on trade, 1 Kersti Kaljulaid in Holger Roonemaa, ‘We don’t know what flowers will bloom from seeds planted this year’, Postimees, 23 December 2019. Available from [https://news.postimees.ee/6857626/we-don-t-know-what-flowers- will-bloom-from-seeds-planted-this-year]. 1 the Russo-Ukrainian war, global migration and climate change crises, the Brexit etc.) outside the imagery ‘brackets’ of direct analysis on this particular occasion. For those to be covered, there will be a different briefing. Elections No 1… The March 2019 Riigikogu elections wrapped the most anticipated process in the country up. For Estonia, its parliament is nearly everything in terms of political substance – it is the epicentre of the country’s political activity and the place where it all happens. The Riigikogu forms the Government, adopts laws, votes for the nation’s Presidents, but, more importantly, represents the only source of power in the country – the political power of citizens of the Republic of Estonia. As usual, during the campaign, a high number of predictions were made in regards of visualising a configuration of what would be the country’s prospective governmental coalition. Before March 2019, nearly all of those political ‘weather forecasts’ were based on the assumption that no Estonian party, which would be enjoying the honour to enter the XIV Riigikogu, would be willing to form the new Government together with the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE). The latter political party’s relative success in the pre-elections polls was associated with extreme populism and xenophobia, which EKRE politicians extensively employed to gain attention of the electorate. The actuality turned out to be much less idealistic – Estonia ended up with a minority Government where the EKRE managed to receive 5 (five!) ministerial portfolios, including ‘Finance’ and ‘the Interior’. Despite winning the elections with 28.9% of the total votes, the Estonian Reform Party did not manage to lead the process of the next Government’s formation. Primarily, it was due to the undisputed fact that the Estonian Centre Party (Centre) with their 21.3%, the EKRE (17.8%) and Pro Patria (11.4%) had already pre-negotiated a prospective coalitional deal prior to the day when the country’s President offered Kaja Kallas, the leader of the ‘reformists’, the constitutional mandate to officially kick the process off. In few days, the whole country realised that a number of top-politicians who, before the elections, were publicly denouncing even a remote possibility to be in the same Government with the EKRE, had changed their minds and, by doing that, significantly broadened horizons of political compromise in Estonia. After all, the EKRE managed to collect 99,671 votes and added 12 more seats to the party’s parliamentary faction, increasing its presence at the Riigikogu by astronomical 271%. All over sudden, the numbers did magically stack up for the Prime Minister and his Centre party to have a chance of keeping the chairmanship in the Estonian Government 2 for another term. Jüri Ratas decided to take such an opportunity, at the expense of his own and his party’s popularity though. As for the actual process of the 2019 Riigikogu elections, there was something positively remarkable in regards of how a sizeable share of the Estonian electorate decided to cast their votes. While the turnout was fairly high to be also noted (565,045 out of 887,420 or 63.7%), the societal segment who voted electronically represented 247,232 citizens or 43.75% of the participating voters. The latter figure is few steps shy from being described as unbelievable, especially when one compares Estonia with some of the more ‘experienced’ democracies, which are much more archaic in the field of e-governance that the small Baltic/Nordic nation. However, the dynamics is already speculatively ‘predicting’ a ground-shaking outcome of the 2023 Riigikogu elections – in four years, the majority of the participating voters are likely to ‘cast’ their ‘ballots’ electronically. It was already in May 2019, during the European Parliament elections, when Estonia nearly made it – 46.72% of the country’s participating voters decided to use the Internet when choosing their candidates, even though the total turnout was far less impressive than it was back in March (332,859 people or 37.6% of eligible voters). Elections No 2… Considering the March-April shake-up in Estonian politics as well as the Centre party’s significant drop in polls that followed the announcement of the new Government, the May 2019 elections to the European Parliament were arguably seen by the country’s main oppositional parties (Reform and Social Democrats) as a platform for a sounding political revenge. Indeed, the revenge it was, with Marina Kaljurand (Social Democrats), Andrus Ansip (Reform) and Urmas Paet (Reform) completing the list of the top-three ‘performers’ of the contest by winning correspondingly 65,549, 41,017 and 30,014 votes. In a significant addition, the Estonian representatives in the latest ‘version’ of the European Parliament are, cumulatively, among the most high-profile groups of MEPs. As it was noted in one of the previous briefings, after May 2019, Estonia sent to the European Parliament three of the country’s former Ministers of Foreign Affairs (Urmas Paet, Marina Kaljurand and Sven Mikser), the EU’s former Vice-President of the European Commission (Andrus Ansip). There is also a possibility for Riho Terras (Pro Patria), the former Commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, to become an MEP, if the Brexit ever gets eventuated with the British MEPs leaving the European Parliament. In such a case, Estonia should be granted an additional seat, which will be given to Terras. 3 The ubiquitous EKRE factor There will be no exaggeration to claim that the EKRE factor has revolutionised Estonian politics in 2019. Since the March elections to the Riigikogu, the Estonian Government has not enjoyed a single working week without discussing a problem, which would be directly or indirectly associated with the EKRE and, more specifically, the party’s leadership (Mart and Martin Helme). A myriad of sounding scandals pushed three EKRE-promoted Ministers (Marti Kuusik, Kert Kingo and Mart Järvik) towards resignations, and Jüri Ratas has been gradually losing his credibility as a Prime Minister. When it would appear to be impossible for the intra- Government level of cohesion to be as questionable as it was, Mart Helme (the country’s Minister of the Interior) decided to test the limits of unthinkable and even improbable. Speaking on TRE Raadio broadcast Räägime, the EKRE’s leader made an unethical statement towards Sanna Marin, the newly appointed Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia’s closest ally, Finland: “Now we can see that a salesgirl has become prime minister and some other street activist and uneducated person has also become a member of the government”2.
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