EKRE and Isamaa want to restrict the voting rights of non-Estonian and non-EU citizens residing in Estonia, while the other parliamentary parties prefer alternative solutions. Currently, Estonian residents who are not Estonian citizens, nor of any other EU country, are eligible to vote in local elections, writes ERR News.
In the local elections last fall, in addition to Estonian and EU citizens, 140,167 people had the right to vote. Around half of these (70,154) were Russian citizens and a further 63,397 were stateless persons. However, only foreigners with legal residence in Estonia are eligible to vote.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has once again raised the question of whether Russian citizens should have a say in who runs Estonia’s municipalities. On Monday, former Isamaa chairman and two-time prime minister Mart Laar said, that Isamaa could call for voting rights to be restricted during coalition talks.
“Giving the right to vote in local elections to citizens of a completely different country, a hostile country – that could be abolished,” said Laar.
In fact, Isamaa already submitted a draft proposal to this effect in April.
After proposing a similar draft bill in 2017, EKRE included promises to address the issue along the same lines in their program for the 2019 elections.
However, even if EKRE and Isamaa are in agreement, the same unresolved concerns over the issue, which arose during the previous coalition, may return. The Center Party for instance, is against restricting voting rights.
“To start depriving someone, for example, an elderly man, of his right to vote because he hasn’t passed a language exam is, in my opinion, unfair. This person may be completely loyal to the Estonian state, have raised his or her family here, contributed to society, to the livelihood of the Estonian state, and then the state comes along and announces that we are taking away the right to vote in local elections because we do not trust him or her in any way,” said Tanel Kiik, deputy chairman of the Center Party.
Nor is the idea likely to find support from members of the two remaining parliamentary parties.
In correspondence earlier this month, Justice Minister Maris Lauri (Reform) said, that the government would not support Isamaa’s draft proposal. The ministry also highlighted that Isamaa’s proposal would also mean 434 British, 120 Norwegian and 172 U.S. citizens losing the right to vote in local elections.
SDE chair Lauri Läänemets says the issue is important, but Isamaa’s proposed solution is not the right one.
“It will not increase (non-Estonian and non-EU citizens’) loyalty to Estonia. I would put the question the other way round – how can we get more of these people to be loyal to Estonia? This would not be a complicated amendment, but then what? It is true that there would no longer be this influence on the local government through local elections, but how would this render the person more pro-Estonian?
What’s going on in people’s minds is a big security risk, we should be dealing with that instead.”
Läänemets does not offer to provide a solution, instead stressing that there is no quick and simple way to convince people with pro-Russian sympathies.
