Isamaa leader calls for pre-midsummer general assembly after all news.err.ee - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from news.err.ee Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Isamaa has expelled a party member behind the wholesale transfer of members from an anti-immigration group, and has also chosen not to process the applications of his followers, citing damage to the party s reputation.
Madis Sütt was former leader of the Rahva Tahe non-parliamentary party whose members, around 400 of them, joined Isamaa s Tartu branch the Saturday before last, which would have boosted overall party membership by over 5 percent in the process, had they been admitted.
Isamaa leader Helir-Valdor Seeder said Tuesday that: The party s leadership condemns activities which damage the reputation of Isamaa. Based on the information published last week, it became clear that Madis Sütt could not continue as a member of the Isamaa party.
0 >The recent Rahva Tahe incident has cast shade on Isamaa, the party s leader, Helir-Valdor Seeder (whose silhouette in fact appears in this image) says. Source: Priit Mürk/ERR
The recent corporate joining of the opposition Isamaa party has put the organization s reputation on the line, leading members say. Over four hundred members of a non-parliamentary party applied to join Isamaa at the same time, at a time when it has seen an internal challenge on its direction, met with a crackdown on internal dissent and the postponement of leadership elections.
Party chair Helir-Valdor Seeder addressed members via a letter in which he acknowledged that the mass joining of new members which recently took place in Tartu had cast a pall over Isamaa as a whole, adding the Tartu branch party workers will now have to sift through all 400 or so applications to see which ones are sincere.
The opposition Isamaa party s Tartu regional branch board accepted 403 new members on Monday, most of whom joined in the wake of Madis Sütt, some-time founder of the non-parliamentary Rahva Tahe party. Considering there are 7,731 members in the party according to the business register data, the membership increased by 5.2 percent in that one day and stemming a general trend for a fall in party membership in recent years.
Sütt, who became a member of the party on January 19 this year, had tried to start his political activity with the Rahva Tahe Party in 2018. That campaign caught public attention due to the fact that there was a prize giveaway of a phone offered to those joining.