Common sense and economic stability scored an enormous victory in Estonia's parliamentary election last weekend (proudly also the world's first to fully utilize internet voting) as the liberal Reform Party mustered 27.8 percent of the vote, beating out the Center Party, a coalition partner and the party favored to win the ballot according to most polls.
Incredibly, the two ruling parties won 54 percent of the vote, which amounts to a whopping 60 seats in the 101-member Riigikogu (parliament). By contrast, in Latvia three ruling parties won less than half the vote in the election last October. Together the Reformists and Centrists could rule comfortably and not have to share ministerial seats with the third coalition partner since April 2005, the agrarian People's Union.
Correctly, many Estonian politicians pointed out that this smashing victory did not necessarily signify a "vote for stability," though with one of the two fastest growing economies in the EU certainly many Estonians are feeling more confident about their future than during any previous election. To the contrary, some claim that the Reformists' gains this year 's the party won 12 more seats than it did in 2003 's was due to voters' widening apprehension of the Center Party and its quasi-demagogic leader, Edgar Savisaar.
The Centrists have become increasingly populist in recent years, and their batch of fiscally unrealistic election promises showed this. The party's tax-and-spend platform would not only put the Baltic state in hot water with Brussels, but create a debt burden for future generations of Estonians 's whose numbers are decreasing, let's not forget. No less important, Savisaar's shameless flirtations with the Kremlin's rubber-stamp party, United Russia, fomented a wellspring of suspicions and ill-will and generally demonstrated a lack of wise leadership.
In this sense, the Reformists did well since more Estonians looked to them to keep the renegade Centrists in check. This, and ideological differences, have nudged the Reform Party, led by Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, away from the Centrists and Savisaar and toward the right-wing IRL union. The latter party, a merger of Pro Patria and Res Publica, finished third and won 19 seats in Parliament. Since another party is necessary to form a majority government, it is logical that the Social Democrats, who placed fourth, would be considered a third possible coalition partner. The SocDems can not be considered an outsider since they have a long history in cooperating with Pro Patria and one of its leaders, Mart Laar. The two parties were part of the same government from 1999 's 2002.
The Centrists, in the meantime, will do what they do best: bide their time. With 29 seats in Parliament, they will be a force to be reckoned with 's if not now, then at some juncture over the next four years. The numbers speak for themselves. If in 1999, it won 23.4 percent of the vote, then in 2003 it managed 25.4 percent and last Sunday 26.1 percent. As the only mainstream party that actively engages Estonia's ethnic minority, the Center Party is here to stay.
But for now, the spotlight is on the Reformists. They are the one party that can get along with all the others, and hence, are the force that will have to captain Estonia the next four years. Problems abound. Though Estonia leads in technology, it has a declining population, a labor market crunch, high road fatality rate (six people died on the country's roads in the week before the election), a rising number of HIV cases and an increasingly surly Russia breathing down its neck. Definitely not a time for complacency.
