Photo: POSTIMEES / SCANPIX / LETA
The Estonian Council will meet in an extraordinary session on Monday to elect a new president by secret ballot, who will hold this position for the next five years.
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In order to be elected in the first round of a parliamentary vote, the President must obtain the support of at least two-thirds of the Members or 68 votes.
The Estonian Central Election Commission has registered one presidential candidate – Alar Karis, the director of the National Museum. He has been nominated by the two ruling coalition parties, the Reform Party and the Center Party.
However, the two coalition parties in parliament together have only 59 votes, so Karis’s chances will depend on the vote of the members of the other parliamentary factions.
It would be sufficient to elect him with the support of the opposition “Fatherland” party or the Social Democratic Party, if at least one of them decided on a common position, but both political forces have already announced that no consensus has been reached and members of their factions will have the right to vote freely.
Kariss, 63, is a graduate of the Estonian University of Natural Sciences and specializes in biologism. From 2003 to 2007 he was the Rector of the University of Natural Sciences, from 2007 to 2012 – the Rector of the University of Tartu, from 2013 to 2018 – the Auditor General of Estonia, and since 2018 he has been the Director of the Estonian National Museum. He named education, science and innovation as his main election priorities.
Meanwhile, a third opposition political force, the right-wing populist Estonian Conservative People’s Party (EKRE), has named former parliamentary speaker Henna Pelluas as its presidential candidate. However, Mr Pelluas will not be able to stand as a candidate, with the support of 21 MEPs, two more than in the ECRE Group.
The current president, Kersti Kaljulaida, whose term expires on October 10, expressed her readiness to run for a second term this month, but she does not have enough support from the parties represented in parliament.
In turn, the Estonian public would like to see him in this position for the next five years as well – in a recent survey conducted by the sociological research company Kantar Emor, 37% of respondents considered him the preferred candidate, while 51% of the three preferred candidates.
In the 101-member parliament, the Liberal Reform Party has 34 seats, the Center Party 25 seats, the Conservative People’s Party 19 seats, the National Conservative Party Tēvzeme 12 seats and the Social Democratic Party 11 seats.
If the president is not elected in the first round, new candidates are nominated the next morning and the second round takes place at noon. If this vote is also unsuccessful, it will be followed by a third round in the afternoon, in which the candidates with the most votes in the first two rounds will compete.
If the required two-thirds majority is still not obtained, the Speaker of the Riga Council convenes an electoral college, in which the president is elected by members of parliament and local government representatives, and the candidate must obtain more than half of the votes.
In the college, which must convene to vote within a month after the third round, local governments are represented depending on the number of eligible residents, and according to the data of 2021, 107 local government representatives could participate in this vote along with 101 members of the Riga Council.
According to observers, this year’s presidential elections take place before the upcoming municipal elections in mid-October, so it is likely that all parties, with the exception of EKRE, have an interest in the president being elected by parliament. This suggests that some members of the Fatherland and Social Democrat groups could also decide in favor of Karis’s candidacy, but it is difficult to predict the outcome of the first round.
EKRE, for its part, is interested in delaying the electoral process so that the final say is given to the College of Electors, which also requires the support of 21 electors, as this would increase Pelluas’ chances.
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