With Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and her Reform-Center government having distributed ministerial portfolios over the weekend, nine MPs, mostly from Reform, will have to be changed out in Riigikogu.
There are a few minor changes for Center Party s Riigikogu faction - outgoing prime minister Jüri Ratas will return to the Riigikogu, but as social affairs committee chairman Tõnis Mölder was appointed environment minister, Imre Sooäär will maintain his position in parliament, a post he took up in December. The remaining ministers from Center are either the same from the previous government or will take up portfolios from outside of the Riigikogu.
On Friday, the Riigikogu board initated proceedings for a bill presented by 19 MPs that would equate a registered partnership contract to a marriage union.
The bill was presented by 10 Center MPs and nine of the 10 opposition Social Democratic Party (SDE) MPs. The bill would subsume registered partnership contracts, implemented from October 9, 2014, and regulated by the Registered Partnership Act into the Family Law Act, rendering the Registered Partnership Act, also known as the cohabitation act, off the statute book.
The bill follows the scrapping of a planned referendum on the definition of marriage, which in turn fell by the wayside largely with the resignation of Jüri Ratas as prime minister earlier in the week, and consequently the exit of the Center-EKRE-Isamaa coalition.
The change in government means at least five MP seats at the Riigikogu will change hands.
Since the coalition discussions ahead of forming a new administration involve only Reform and the Center Party, the Conservative People s Party of Estonia (EKRE) and Isamaa ministers will no longer be in office. This affects two Isamaa MPs and two from EKRE, the fifth MP being Center s, since outgoing prime minister Jüri Ratas is to return to the Riigikogu.
Those who were elected to the Riigikogu in March 2019 will retake their seats, those who were not, will not.
Government ministers do not sit in the Riigikogu, meaning if they win a seat at the elections and then get appointed to a ministerial post, they have to vacate their seats and the next candidate on that party s electoral list who did not win a seat, takes their place.
0 >The riigikogu sitting on Monday, December 14, where the marriage referendum bill passed its first reading. Source: Ken Mürk/ERR
According to daily newspaper Postimees, it is highly doubtful that the ruling coalition will get together a sufficient number of votes during the second reading of the draft resolution on a referendum on the definition of marriage for the draft to advance to its third and final vote.
In the first reading of the draft resolution of the Riigikogu, 48 members of the 101-seat chamber were in favor of dumping the bill, and 51 were against the proposal. Center Party member Mihhail Korb, who was absent from that sitting, likely counts as someone who will vote for the referendum plan this time, according to Postimees.
Opposition Social Democratic Party (SDE) MP Lauri Läänemets stepped down as deputy chairman of the constitutional committee of the Riigikogu on Friday to remove Anti Poolamets (EKRE) from the committee chairman post. New chairmen will likely be elected on Monday.