Center Party boots rebellious MPs

  • 2004-05-27
  • By TBT staff
TALLINN - The executive board of the Center Party on May 18 endorsed the expulsion of the six rebellious members after they left the party's parliamentary faction.

Center Party press officer Evelyn Sepp told the Baltic News Service that the decision was made on the basis of the party statutes: since members had left the centrist faction in Parliament, they were thus expelled also from the party.
As a result, Peeter Kreitzberg, Sven Mikser, Jaanus Marrand, Harri Ounapuu, Mark Soosaar and Olev Laanjarv are no longer members of the Center Party, one of the two most popular parties in Estonia.
Mikser was former faction leader in Parliament, and Ounapuu was his deputy.
The fate of Liina Tonisson, another prominent member of the party who has been expelled by the local chapter, has yet to be decided by the board.
Center Party Secretary General Kadri Must said that there was no need to hurry with Tonisson, who had said she wanted to remain in the party.
Tonisson was a close colleague of Center Party Chairman Edgar Savisaar since the latter became leader of the Popular Front in 1988 during the drive for the reestablishment of independence.
The six former party members left the parliamentary faction over dissatisfaction with party leadership, which in their opinion had become too authoritarian and uncompromising. As a result, the Center Party, despite wide popular support, was consistently being left out of decision-making on the national level.
The six said they intended to create a new parliamentary faction, the Democratic Center Party, though it would lack official party status.
In the words of Kreitzberg, the aim of the new party would be to become a political force in the 101-seat legislature.
One project of the former Centrists was a law that would ban parties whose work contradicted legislation. Currently only the parties that violate the criminal law are banned in Estonia, but the Centrist MPs wanted to extend this ban so a party could not violate any law in Estonia.
Another Center Party initiative was to revamp party finance, in particular by limiting donations from private individuals to 1,000 kroons (64 euros) a year and restricting donations to bank transfers only, not cash payments.
The former centrists said they were also going to push a bill on free school lunches for secondary school students.