The Russian card has been a draw card for the Reform Party for years, with which they have tried to draw attention away from their own omissions. That’s why Prime Minister Kallas was even convincing for a while on these long-rehearsed topics, but when the Russian card was used to justify his own inability to direct the country’s economy and organize energy, the talk became rather ridiculous.
Now, when the Reform Party government is trying to push through numerous revolutionary decisions for which it did not ask for a mandate during the election campaign, it is of course time to pull out the Russian card again to divert the voters’ attention. The first watch graphomaniacs, for example Pärtel-Peeter Pere, have already started producing texts. As the last topic of the quite similar articles, I remember the criticism of Tallinn’s education system, which seems not to be moving to Estonian as quickly as it should.
Although today, in my opinion, it would be much more important to talk about how, as the next step towards marriage equality, people can start determining their gender without doctors, how under the auspices of the car tax they are toying with the idea of starting to monitor all vehicle drivers 24/7, and why the promised economic policy promoting entrepreneurship was replaced by simply taxing people to be poor after the elections, we can to also resolve this issue of education in Tallinn. Then the Reform Party can hopefully put the Russian card back in its pocket and focus on its work.
The Tallinn city system is pro-Estonian
As a native Estonian and a Turk, I have not encountered the kind of pro-Russianness in the city system that the Reform Party is talking about. We have different surnames, but work and way of thinking have always been pro-Estonian, at least during my three years as district mayor.
Do you remember how, two years ago, on the occasion of the Estonian Flag Day, the Defense Forces Orchestra, which Tallinn saved from liquidation, performed on Freedom Square, and the song of the Estonian flag specially set to the church bells for this event sounded from the tower of St. John’s Church? This event was organized by the Tallinn City Center Government in just a few days, when it turned out that the state had not planned anything in the capital that day. And the initiative and ideas for organizing this event came from my good colleagues with Russian names.
Slogans are easy to paint
It is clear that painting slogans is easier than real work. It is easy for the government, when planning educational life, to run over local governments with a road roller and give them tasks that cannot be fulfilled. It is easy to ignore the opposition parties’ proposals for amendments that would help to fulfill the meaning of the law better, and I have a suspicion that a smooth transition to the Estonian language was not the government’s goal in itself. It seems to me that it was completely premeditated to set unrealistic tasks for the municipalities in order to keep the opportunity to frustrate them. “Find a solution!” says the government, but ignores the fact that our solutions were in the amendments that they themselves decided to ignore!
Today, all political forces that are really pro-Estonian have understood that if education is brought to the Estonian language at a forced pace, the result will not be an Estonian-language education system, but mixed classes where the Estonian-speaking student has to wait behind classmates with less language skills. People are not robots that can be programmed around in a hurry. But anyone who really knows how the education system works can definitely see that Tallinn is moving in the right direction with a very firm step.
Of course, there are things that should have been done differently twenty years ago – every political party has these experiences. But these things cannot be blamed on the mayor, who during his reign has made exactly as many innovations in the city system as it is possible to do while maintaining stability. Today, all our school principals speak Estonian at the required level. From this spring, the new head of the Board of Education will also be in office – we will give him time to set up the atra! And a new education development plan is being prepared.
Last year, the ability of our officials was demonstrated by how in one hundred days it was possible to create a new school for Ukrainian children, which celebrated its first birthday in May. Even the children there already speak Estonian!
Education in Tallinn is in safe hands!
So I will calm down the Reform Party here – education in Tallinn is in good hands and you can focus on your own work with peace of mind – on how to manage the Estonian country without ruining people and taxing companies to death. And using the example of Tallinn’s recent practices, I have one more suggestion for the prime minister – instead of trying to push through bad decisions quickly, in the hope that people will forget them for the new elections – involve people instead! Discuss your plans with the people who are actually affected by these decisions and you might be surprised – not only will no one bully you, but people in government also have very nice and creative ideas to solve problems. And then there is no need to rely on someone’s bad memory in the elections, because the bearer of the country’s highest power – the people – has had a say.
