Kallas backs minority government as path to compromise

Estonia’s Education and Science Minister and Estonia 200 leader Kristina Kallas said she supports minority governments because they force governing parties to seek broader compromises and give parliament more power, ERR reported.

“A minority government forces you to negotiate and gives parliament the power that is assigned to it under our constitution,” Kallas said on the television programme “Esimene stuudio”.

She said parliament should be the place where political agreements and compromises are reached. Although majority governments are more convenient, she called minority government a suitable form of governance for a parliamentary state.

Kallas also criticised opposition parties’ calls for snap elections, describing them as an attempt to stir up political excitement and create expectations about an outcome that would not realistically happen.

She praised the Social Democratic Party for refusing to join those calls. Kallas said the focus should instead be on finding a majority in parliament, because the governing coalition no longer has one.

“The majority is mathematically in the hands of the opposition,” Kallas said, adding that opposition parties must show whether they are prepared to take responsibility for governing.

She called it irresponsible to bring down the current government without forming a new one and leave Estonia without a government, saying that would amount to political manoeuvring rather than responsibility to voters and the state.

The Reform Party and Estonia 200 governing alliance lost its parliamentary majority about three weeks ago, when Kalev Stoicescu of Estonia 200 and Meelis Kiili of the Reform Party announced that they were leaving their respective parties.