Estonia’s
first female prime minister has promised to implement changes in both
style and substance in the governance of the Baltic nation, as she takes
charge after two years in which a far-right party was in the ruling
coalition.
Kaja Kallas, a 43-year-old lawyer and head of Estonia’s Reform party, was sworn into office on Tuesday.
“My
government will be very pro-European, especially in supporting European
values such as the rule of law,” she said in an interview. “We will
also have a very clear change in policies when it comes to issues like
climate policy.”
The new coalition government
has vowed to develop plans to stop the production of oil shale power in
the country by 2035 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
The previous coalition collapsed after a corruption scandal
involving the Centre party of Jüri Ratas, who resigned as prime
minister. He caused controversy after elections two years ago by going
into coalition with the far-right EKRE, whose members opposed all immigration, were often Eurosceptic and on occasion praised Nazi economic policy.
A
flagship EKRE policy was holding a referendum on whether to explicitly
define marriage as between a man and a woman in the Estonian
constitution, which they demanded as a condition of joining the
government and which was due to take place later this year. With EKRE
out of government, the referendum will now not take place.
Estonia
passed a law allowing civil partnerships for same-sex couples six years
ago, but many of the provisions are not yet in force. Kallas said she
wanted to see progress on that, but added her government would not push
for same-sex marriage.
“We will not open the
marriage definition in order to keep division down in society, but we
will try to move on with granting full rights to civil partnerships, so
eventually we will achieve the same goal: that all people have the same
rights,” she said.
EKRE politicians had become
known for scandalous outbursts over the past two years, with President
Kersti Kaljulaid even convening the country’s security council over
fears that EKRE politicians were jeopardising relations with allies. She
accused the Ratas government of being “a threat to national security
and constitutional order”. EKRE’s leader, Mart Helme, who served as
interior minister until late last year, called Joe Biden “corrupt” and referred to Finland’s 35-year-old prime ministerm Sanna Marin, as a “sales girl”.
Now,
Estonia becomes one of the few countries in the world where both the
prime minister and head of state are women. Kallas, who is the daughter
of former prime minister Siim Kallas, also appointed women to the key
cabinet posts of finance and foreign ministers. “Everybody asks me about
their gender, it’s not about their gender it’s about them being really
competent people,” she said.
The Centre party remains in the coalition, sharing ministerial posts with Kallas’s Reform party despite the corruption scandal.
Kallas
said there was little that could be done to win over the support of
EKRE voters, with the party neither winning new fans nor losing
supporters during its time in government, instead staying at around 15%
of support.
“It’s like a religion. It’s not
based on the policies, but [their supporters] believe in them and
nothing will make them decide otherwise,” she said, citing polls that
showed EKRE voters were the least likely to be swayed by new policies
into voting for other parties.
She said,
however, that she had little time for the criticisms being made by EKRE
politicians about the new direction of the government. “It’s like, can’t
you have this monologue in front of a mirror? You were in the
government for two years … and did nothing for the places and people
further from Tallinn.”
The first major
challenge for the new government will be dealing with the coronavirus
pandemic. The slow speed of EU vaccine procurement and distribution, as
well as neighbouring Finland’s decision to close its borders to
Estonians, is testing Europhile sentiment, but Kallas said, while the
vaccine situation was frustrating, it was still better than each country
looking after only itself.
“Without the joint
approach … a small country that doesn’t need so many vaccines can’t
really get on board of any agreement that pharmaceutical companies have
with a big country; we could only ask other countries to also buy some
for us,” she said. Once vaccines do arrive in larger quantities than the
current trickle, a large proportion of Estonia’s 1.3 million population
could be vaccinated quickly, she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/01/estonias-first-female-prime-minister-vows-to-tackle-climate-crisis
