The bill in question is yet another initiative aimed at scoring political points at the cost of dividing society. We are talking about a draft law according to which the right of citizens of aggressor countries to participate in local elections will be restricted until their country of citizenship commits crimes of aggression.
The argument that local governments also have functions aimed at ensuring security and order, and therefore citizens of aggressor countries should not elect their deputies, would make some sense if citizens of other countries could also apply. But we choose only Estonian citizens.
Thus, the draft demonstrates mistrust not only towards the Russian Federation, but also towards the citizens of the Republic of Estonia. In fact, the head of the Ministry of Justice is trying to legitimize the thesis that some Estonian citizens are untrustworthy. This is outrageous.
In my opinion, the bill does not take into account the factor of dual citizenship, while we know that several thousand (I have heard about 20,000) Estonian citizens by birth also have Russian citizenship (and according to the constitution they have the right to do so, unlike naturalized citizens).
Does Mr. Laanet really intend to take away the right to vote from citizens born with another (Russian) citizenship? It would be interesting to see.
Another interesting aspect is the mixing of the legal and political spheres. The Ministry of Justice proposes to take away the right to vote from citizens recognized as aggressor states by the European Parliament and/or Riigikogu. At the same time, both parliaments give a political, not a legal assessment (only a court can give this). Is this a sufficient basis to risk violating the Constitution?
Other consequences of passing the law are quite obvious and have been discussed many times. The voting ban increases the feeling of alienation of tens of thousands of Estonians. The growing feeling “they don’t want us here after all” in potentially every twenty Estonian resident is exactly what the draft is supposed to fight against: the security threat factor.
At times, even the legitimacy of the local government is questioned. For example, Narva is home to approximately 19,000 citizens of the Russian Federation, with a total population of approximately 50,000 in Narva. What percentage of the city’s population will eventually be represented by city councilors – and what kind of democracy is that?
That is the key question. The adoption of the law would create a situation where taxpayers are deprived of the right to participate in the organization of the life of their homes.
In an interview with ERR, Kalle Laanet admitted that the Ministry of Justice had not yet analyzed possible legal obstacles. This means that the draft law of the Minister of Justice, which will soon be presented to the cabinet, is a semi-finished product, which gives a clear signal: when choosing between high-quality legislation and sound political action, the latter is preferred.
But when the analysis was published, the Ministry of Justice refused to show it to ERR journalists, pointing out that “these are not final documents yet”.
For the mentioned and many unmentioned reasons (this is the topic of a separate analysis), I consider the adoption of such a law not only wrong, but dangerous.
