More funding for the implementation of Estonian-language kindergarten education is needed, Reform Party leader Kaja Kallas said Monday evening, following that day's coalition talks with the Center Party, ETV news show "Aktuaalne kaamera" (AK) reported. This will require compromise with Center, whose policy is not to see an end to Russian-language education.
The Reform Party and Center Party coalition covers the political spectrum in Estonia more or less as completely as a Reform-SDE-Isamaa alliance would. However, cooperation between the two largest Riigikogu parties can only be pragmatic, which is the only way to pull Estonia out of the bog it has sunk into, Rein Raud writes.
I have never been a voter of the Reform Party or the Center Party, even though for different reasons.
The cynicism, arrogance and almost uncompromising loyalty to the wealthiest part of society of many leading Reformists has rubbed me the wrong way.
My criticism for Center concerns their overly flexible morals and a potential lack of a backbone among several leading figures of the party. And, of course, jumping from one corruption scandal to the next and an allegedly dormant cooperation agreement with the ruling party in the Kremlin.
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.
Center Party leader and outgoing prime minister Jüri Ratas says his resignation early Wednesday means that the coalition of the Center Party, the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) and Isamaa is over. Ratas added that now is not the time for hanging around on setting up its replacement.
Finance minister Martin Helme (EKRE) has reiterated that he thinks his party will be left out of the next coalition, once it is formed, following Jüri Ratas' (Center) resignation in the early hours of Wednesday.