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Estonia’s liberal opposition wins election as far right surges
TALLINN, March 4, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Estonia’s opposition liberal Reform
party won Sunday’s general election, outpacing centre-left Prime Minister
Juri Ratas’s party and a surging far-right buoyed by a backlash from mostly
rural voters in the Baltic eurozone state.
Led by former MEP Kaja Kallas, Reform garnered 28.8 percent of the vote,
well ahead of Ratas’s Centre party on 23 percent, with the far-right EKRE
more than doubling its previous election score at 17.8 percent, according to
full results on Estonia’s official state elections website.
Two other parties in the race which currently govern in coalition with
Ratas, the Social Democrats and conservative Isamaa, respectively took 9.8
percent and 11.4 percent of the vote.
Both could team up with Reform for a 56-seat majority in the 101-member
parliament, or holding a combined 60 seats, arch-rivals Reform and Centre
could govern together as they have done in the past.
“Now the real work begins to put together the government and start running
the country with common sense,” Kallas told public broadcaster ETV/ERR.
Insisting that the “EKRE is not a choice for us,” Kallas said Reform would
“keep all coalition options on the table”, adding that her party has “strong
differences with Centre in three areas: taxation, citizenship, and
education.”
As for Ratas, when asked if Centre would consider becoming a junior
coalition partner, he said “of course” but declined to elaborate.
EKRE leader Mart Helme raised the idea of a Centre-EKRE-Isamaa coalition
commanding a 57-seat majority, according to ETV/ERR.
Bread-and-butter issues like taxation and public spending had dominated the
lacklustre campaign, along with tensions over Russian-language education for
Estonia’s sizeable Russian minority and the rural-urban divide.
The far-right EKRE captured support promising to slash income and excise
taxes and pushing anti-immigration rhetoric.
Turnout clocked in at 63.1 percent of eligible voters, the state election
commission said.
– Tax breaks, wage hikes –
Traditional rivals, Centre and Reform have alternated in government and
even governed together over the nearly three decades since Estonia broke free
from the crumbling Soviet Union.
Both strongly support Estonia’s EU and NATO membership and have favoured
austerity to keep spending in check, giving the country the eurozone’s lowest
debt-to-GDP ratio.
Centre has vowed to hike pensions by 8.4 percent and to replace Estonia’s
20 percent flat income tax and 21 percent corporate tax with a progressive
system to boost state revenue.
MORE/MSY/0840 hrs
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Nixing a progressive tax, business-friendly Reform instead wants to raise
the tax-free monthly minimum exemption and lower unemployment insurance
premiums to aid job creation.
Joblessness hovers at just under five percent while economic growth is
expected to slow to 2.7 percent this year, from 3.9 percent in 2018.
For Lauri, an advertising specialist who declined to reveal his family
name, the isolationist and conservative foreign and social policy proposed by
parties like the EKRE is cause for concern.
“There’s a trend in Western Europe right now, if we look at the
Netherlands, at England, maybe even France. I don’t support such populism
myself,” he told AFP.
– Estxit –
While it won just seven seats in the 2015 election, the EKRE is now a close
third behind the mainstream parties.
Staunchly eurosceptic, it called for an “Estxit” referendum on Estonia’s EU
membership, although the move would fail in the overwhelmingly pro-EU
country.
The party’s suspicion of Moscow translates into strong support for NATO
membership and the multinational battalion the alliance installed in Estonia
in 2017 as a tripwire against possible Russian adventurism.
Tonis Saarts, a Tallinn University political scientist, describes the
EKRE’s position on liberal democracy, including civic and human rights, rule
of law and the separation of powers, as “very ambiguous” and compares it to
similar parties that have recently gained support across Europe.
The party’s appeal is largely rooted in the misgivings of rural Estonians
who feel left behind after years of austerity under Centre and Reform.
“These people see few economic prospects and feel the mainstream parties
don’t care much about their problems,” Saarts told AFP.
– Russian minority –
The Centre party has long been favoured by the Russian minority, comprising
around a quarter of the Baltic state’s population of 1.3 million.
To avoid losing voters suspicious of Russia, Ratas insists that a 2004
cooperation deal with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party is “frozen”. But
out of fear of losing the Russian vote, he has refused to rip it up.
The minority counts on Centre to save the existing education system
comprising Estonian and Russian-language schools rooted in Soviet times,
while Reform and EKRE want to scrap Russian-language teaching.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0840 hrs