It’s only just barely February, and the European Parliament elections are a long time away - but some people like to get a head start.
In Estonia, this year will see two elections: EP in June, and then the municipal elections in October. The latter are far more relevant to the lives of people in Estonia, as evidenced by this year’s hike in land tax. Residents of the capital, controlled by the main opposition Center Party, were outraged, whereas people in second-biggest Tartu, whose former mayor is now Prime Minister for the Reform Party, reveled in their Schadenfreude and low bills.
Yet it’s the European elections that are more prestigious. In 2004, just after Estonia joined the EU, our first MEP selection was carried by the Social Democrats - a second-tier party with neither much of a platform nor any truly impressive messes to their name. SDE traditionally gets into Estonia’s parliament on the alternative vote, attracting people who are sick of the squabbling between the right-wing block of nationalists and free-marketers, and the left-wing phalanx of populists and farmers. This usually gets them enough seats to be the swing vote that keeps the coalition in check. But the Europarliament is not an animal well-understood by the Estonian voter, so the MEP race is a pure popularity contest. The Social Democrats’ top candidate five years ago went on to become the President of Estonia, and now there’s a Facebook group called I Saw Toomas Hendrik Ilves Speak at the LSE and now He is my Hero.
This time around, the squabbling started early on the other side. The first sign of the political silly season was a poster campaign saying, roughly, “the coalition has taken away your money” (and linking to a website on the .EU domain that has no English version). The posters were swiftly amended by the youth organization of one of the target parties - “…and the opposition has spent 1.5 million kroons to tell you this”. Blogger’s ethics require me to mention that the Center Party protested the claim, saying they only spent half that.
But the first party to officially announce their candidates for the Europarliament seats are the Greens. This is another protest party, established ahead of 2007’s national elections, and riding almost entirely on the personal charisma of their chairman. Marek Strandberg is actually top of their MEP candidate list as well; might have something to do with his brainchild’s utter inability over the last two years to make any sort of appreciable difference whatsoever. The Greens are neither part of the coalition (which SDE is), nor are they big enough to be much help to the opposition. Perhaps they’re doing important work behind the scenes, but offhand, I can only recall seeing hide or hair of Strandberg twice: once in one of those slow-news-day stories about MP compensation (apparently he uses his parliamentary allowance to lease a big BMW - albeit one with a diesel engine), and again in a radio show about energy security, where he represented the least constructive side of the Green community, fiercely opposing the very idea of nuclear powerplants in Estonia - presumably preferring the far less polluting oil- and gas-fired infrastructure.
Do the Greens stand a chance? Not unless the other parties ignore the MEP campaign completely: with one of the lowest population densities this side of Sub-Saharan Africa, Estonia isn’t seeing any clear and present danger to its environment, and what we most want from Brussels right now is a firm and effective security policy. The baby seals can wait.
(50 votes, average: 3.78 out of 5)
Loading ...
Great overview - this is good punditry. Marek Strandberg sounds like an interesting character.
Just a note about the fact that you’ve been tagged in a review on thinkaboutitsomemore.blogspot.com.
We haven’t read every post, but we like the tone and punchy detail and think your rating is deflated — we’d give you at least a 4 if we could vote.
Estonia has among the highest hazardous waste per capita stats in the EU. It’s also a walking CO2 per capita menace. Things can be improved, at least for the sake of setting a good example. That said, Estonia does have a sort of industrious approach to making the best of its dirty national resource, oil shale, including spreading the gospel to countries like Morocco and Jordan with high-sulphur oil shale.
I don’t know anything about Strandberg, except he’s not charismatic — some people say he is — and he is a guy who came out of the early Laar era and he was somehow involved in selling roubles to Chechnya, then he successfully reinvented himself as an environmental ideologue, whereas people like Vahur Lahtvee seem to be the soul and conscience of the party.
The fact that Greens are anti-nuclear practically everywhere is just depressing, one of those tragedies of our time.
A couple points.
1) I think SDE has served as an outlet for politicians who don’t want to kiss the butts of the various big party elites and still want a career. Ilves was able to rise to the top rather quickly that way. Had he been in Isamaa or Reform, he would still be standing in line. Which leads one to wonder about the intentions of Jüri Pihl, who is positioned to become SDE party leader next month.
2) The Greens do outstanding grass roots work. I see their representatives in many places signing people up. I am not exactly sure what they stand for, other than protecting the environment, but I welcome the change in dialogue from taxation, history lectures, and mudslinging (basically, the platforms of the three big parties).
3) I also think that the reason that you haven’t heard much from the Greens is because the larger, established parties would like them to go the way of Res Publica. On the other hand, they consistently poll well. Most polls show them about even with SDE’s support (~8-10 percent), which is typically only a few points less than IRL’s support (~12 percent).
Tere päevast! Ma ei tea täpselt miks see on nii, aga ei arva et SDE või Rohelised võitavad valimiseid.
(I hope that is more or less saying that I don’t think that the Social Democracts or Greens might win again the Europeans in Estonia.)
The other parties (not least Keskerakond and Reformierakond) will have learnt their lesson and might try harder to be on top of the polls this time. SDE’s victory last time was rather a surprise coup than the sign of a sustainable political development, don’t you think?
Surely, but like I said, EP elections are not of primary importance to anyone in Estonia. They’re a lot more about personal popularity than policy. (Curiously, that isn’t likely to help the Centrists much, since Savisaar hasn’t allowed any other really strong figures to develop there.)