Estonia's president tasks liberal Kallas with forming new govt

Estonia’s President Kersti Kaljulaid addresses the press on April 5, 2019 at the Presidential Palace in Tallinn, where she met the chairman of Estonia’s Reform party. – Estonia’s President Kersti Kaljulaid tasked liberal Reform party leader Kaja Kallas with forming a new government, a month after an inconclusive general election made tricky coalition building inevitable. Kallas’s party won the March 3, 2019 vote — in which five parties entered parliament — but she failed to forge a majority coalition with the outgoing premier’s runner-up mainstream Centre party. (Photo by Raigo Pajula / AFP)

Estonia’s president on Friday tasked liberal Reform party leader Kaja Kallas with forming a new government, a month after her Reform party won an inconclusive election that has made it difficult for her to forge a majority coalition.

Should Kallas succeed, the 41-year-old lawyer and staunchly pro-EU former MEP will become Estonia’s first woman prime minister, but she faces tough competition.

Juri Ratas, leader of the runner-up centre-left Centre party who stepped down as prime minister on Thursday has spurned a coalition offer from Kallas.

He subsequently appears to have succeeded in building a controversial majority coalition with the anti-EU far-right EKRE party and the Isamaa conservatives in a bid to cling to power and to prevent Kallas from taking office.

But President Kersti Kaljulaid, who has expressed concerns about including a far-right group in government, said on Friday that she wanted to give election winner Kallas a chance to rally a majority.

“Today I made the first offer to form the government to the Reform Party chairwoman Kaja Kallas,” the president said.

Kallas said she was accepting the offer “to send society a message that politics can be done in a positive, dignified and open way, without humiliating or threatening anyone.”

Last month, EKRE party leader Mart Helme threatened riots should he fail to secure a coalition deal with Ratas’s Centre and Isamaa.

In a signal that Ratas has succeeded in clinching a majority coalition, EKRE MP Henn Polluaas was elected parliamentary speaker on Thursday by 55 members during the first post-election sitting of the 101-seat chamber.

Kallas now has two weeks to cobble together a coalition. If she fails, the president will have to tap a new candidate.

Kallas said Friday that she invited the last-spot Social Democrats for coalition talks, but the two parties could only propose a vulnerable 44-seat minority government.

Analyst Rein Toomla told AFP that “it is unlikely that Kaja Kallas can form a majority government.

“A Centre-Isamaa-EKRE coalition now seems more certain,” the Tartu University lecturer said.

Support for the EKRE more than doubled to 19 seats in the March 3 election, buoyed by mostly rural voters hurting after years of tight spending under governments led by establishment parties Reform and Centre.

Bread-and-butter issues such as taxation and public spending dominated the election in the 1.3 million-strong country known for its IT savvy and the eurozone’s lowest debt-to-GDP ratio.

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