Estonia’s Reform Party, headed by Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, has secured first place in Sunday’s parliamentary election, taking 31.6% of the vote.
Nine political parties in all fielded candidates for Estonia’s 101-seat parliament, or Riigikogu. Over 900,000 people were eligible to vote in the general election, and nearly half voted in advance.
With 99% of votes counted, Reform Party had taken 31.6% of the votes, followed by EKRE with 16.1% and the Center Party, traditionally favoured by Estonia’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority, 15%.
Keeping pressure on Russia
The initial results mean the Reform Party is in a remarkably strong position to take a leading role in forming Estonia’s next government; its support translates into 37 seats in the legislature. But it will need junior partners to form a coalition with a comfortable majority to govern.
“This result, which is not final yet, will give us a strong mandate to put together a good government,” Kallas told her party colleagues and jubilant supporters at a hotel in the capital, Tallinn.
“I think that with such a strong mandate, the [aid to Ukraine] will not change because other parties, except EKRE and maybe Center, have chosen the same line,” she said.
Kallas said the election leaves her party in a strong position to form a coalition government that will keep the pressure on Russia:
“We have to do major reforms [during the new term] regarding green transition for example. We also have to invest in our security. Our aggressive neighbour has not vanished and will not vanish, so we have to work with that.”
Inflation and the economy
Kallas had faced a challenge from the far-right populist Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, or EKRE, which wants to limit the Baltic nation’s exposure to the Ukraine crisis and blames the current government for Estonia’s high inflation rate.
Martin Helme is the party leader:
“We’ve had the highest inflation in Europe. We’ve had the biggest drop in living standards, the biggest drop in economics. So we are very rapidly moving into a very multi-pronged crisis in Estonia and I don’t see the liberal parties actually understanding it or being able to solve it.”
In order to stay in power, Reform will again have to form a coalition with one or more of the parties that entered the Baltic state’s 101-seat parliament.