News highlights from February 22—March 1, 1999
* Voters in Estonia head to the polls on March 7 to elect a new parliament, the country’s third parliamentary election since regaining independence from Moscow in 1991.
Most of the main political parties agree on the big issues, including the need to maintain market reforms and to continue to seek European Union membership, and so campaigning has largely focused on personalities.
The election has largely broken down as a contest between an alliance of three center, center-right parties and a loose alliance of center-left groupings, led by controversial Center Party leader Edgar Savisaar.
In a EMOR/Postimees opinion poll, released on March 1, the Center Party was in first place, polling 17 percent support. The Country People’s Party, which has said it would cooperate with the Center Party in any post-election government, registered 10 percent support.
In the poll, the strongly pro-market Reform Party drew 15 percent, the Moderates 9 percent and the Fatherland Union 8 percent, apparently giving the center-right alliance the edge in the election with a total of 32 percent support.
Edgar Savisaar, widely criticized by the mainstream media for semi-authoritarian tendencies, has trumpeted a populist message targeted at Estonian residents who feel they haven’t benefited from post-Soviet reforms.
The Center Party leader has made a call to replace Estonia’s flat tax with a progressive tax, the centerpiece of his campaign, arguing that current tax structures are unfair and contribute to a class-based society.
Savisaar has clearly stuck a chord with many economically hard-hit voters and also among many ethnic Russian voters who recently won citizenship and will be voting in an Estonian national election for the first time.
But many other voters intensely dislike and distrust Savissaar, who has been involved in several political scandals, including one several years ago in which he was accused of secretly tape recording his political rivals while interior minister.
Most analysts say that even if Savisaar is the nominal winner of the election, he will have a hard time wooing enough parties to join him in order to form a government.
The center-right alliance is thought to have the best chance of forming the next government, though the three parties may not win enough seats to form a majority government on their own.
The country’s main ruling party, the Coalition Party scored only 4 percent in the recent opinion poll and could be in danger of falling short of the 5 percent threshold required to win seats in parliament.
The Coalition Party, lead by Prime Minister Mart Siimann, has been widely accused of being indecisive and of being passionless about reforms.
But if the Coalition Party does win four or five seats, it could end up holding the balance of power. It has not committed itself, but most analysts say it would be more likely to side with the center-right-not with Savisaar.
Who could end up as prime minister after the election is not at all clear. Many people have pegged the mild-mannered and widely respected Andres Tarand of the Moderates as having the best chance to head a new government.
The Reform Party’s Siim Kallas or Fatherland’s Mart Laar could also be prime ministerial candidates. But both men have reputations as uncompromising free-market advocates and may not be acceptable to more moderate politicians.
Tarand and the Moderates, while declaring they are very much in favor of market reforms, have said Estonia also needs to devote more attention to the country’s social problems, including growing poverty.
The Moderates have invoked the name of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying Estonia needs to find a Third Way between hands-off free market policies and a social welfare state.
The Reform Party and Fatherland have said they would also pay greater attention to social issues, but insist that the market and spurring stronger growth were the keys to solving Estonia’s social ills.
Two Russian-dominated parties, the center-left Russian Party in Estonia and the far-left United People’s Party, are also vying for seats in the Riigikogu parliament. They have only been registering 2 percent support in opinion polls, apparently losing many ethnic Russian voters to Edgar Savisaar’s Center Party.
* The Baltic states on February 25 officially opened the doors of a joint-military college, which the three countries say should boost their chances of eventually getting into NATO.
Officials say the aim of the college, which will be largely staffed by officers from NATO-member states, is to bring the level of officer training in the Baltics to a more professional, Western level.
Membership in the U.S.-led alliance has long been a top foreign policy goal of all three nations. NATO has said its door is open to the Baltics, but that their fledging armies aren’t yet ready militarily to join.
Moscow has adamantly opposed Baltic membership in NATO, saying their inclusion in the alliance would be a threat to Russia. But Estonian President Lennart Meri said at opening ceremonies for the military college that the Baltic countries have a right to decide which security alliance they want to join, without outside interference.
The first classes at the new Baltic defense college, dubbed Baltdefcol, will begin in August. The main language of instruction for the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian cadets will be English. Danish General Michael Clemmesen is the first rector of the college, which is being financed by money from different Nordic and NATO-members nations, including the United States, France, and Germany.
The college—located in the Estonian city of Tartu, some 200 kilometers southeast of Tallinn—is just the latest project in long-running security cooperation between the three ex-Soviet republics.
In recent years, the countries have established a joint peace-keeping force and a joint mine sweeping unit. They are also setting up a common air defense system.
Combined, the standing armies in the Baltics number fewer than 20,000 men—dwarfed by the million-man army of neighboring Russia.
* The Latvian town of Gulbene is still in a state of shock following the brutal murder of three kindergartners and their teacher on February 22.
The murdered children—all of them girls aged 6, 5 and 4—were stabbed to death during the day Monday by a man who slipped into a room where they had been sleeping.
A 32-year-old teacher at the kindergarten was killed as she tried to stop the assailant.
A 21-year-old murder suspect, Alexander Koryakov, was detained by police as he tried to flee the area. He later told police he had stalked the school for days, and killed the children as part of a plan to become famous as a mass murderer.
He used a meat cleaver to commit the murders, police said.
Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis told a nationwide television audience Monday night that the murders were one of the worst acts of violence in Latvia in recent years.
He said new security measures should be considered to make sure such a tragedy would not happen again.
The mayor of Gulbene, Martins Kokars, said stationing security guards at kindergartens would be an option, but that such measures were beyond the financial means of most schools.
The city government in Gulbene, some 200 kilometers east of Riga, said psychologists were being brought in to counsel children who witnessed the murders.
News highlights from February 15—February 22, 1999
* The three Baltic presidents on February 18 appealed to NATO to keep expanding the alliance and to include their nations as full alliance members at the earliest opportunity.
Their joint NATO statement at the end of a one-day summit in Tallinn comes two months before a special NATO conference in Washington, and appears aimed at focusing NATO’s attention on the Baltic membership bid.
Many analysts don’t expect the alliance to issue new NATO invitations at the Washington summit, and some Baltic officials have expressed fears the whole expansion process could grind to a halt.
In their statement, the Baltic presidents said their countries had worked hard at meeting membership criteria and “that the next round of NATO enlargement should include their countries.”
Despite Russian objections to Baltic NATO membership, Estonian President Lennart Meri told a news conference that eventual NATO membership remained a cornerstone of Baltic security policy.
“You can never say there is enough security in the world,” he said. “That is why we are interested in and will always be interested in an expanded NATO.”
Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus also tried to soothe Russian fears, telling journalists that Baltic aspirations to enter NATO weren’t a threat to anyone.
“There is no hidden agenda about our desire to join,” he said.
All three Baltic countries made membership in NATO a top foreign policy goal after regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
But because of Russian objections, the issue of Baltic membership has been a highly sensitive one for NATO. The alliance has said the NATO door remains open to the Baltics, but that they aren’t yet ready militarily to join.
Some observers in the region have questioned NATO’s commitment to taking in the Baltics, suggesting that the 50-year-old alliance is trying to put the three nations off politely until Russian opposition dies down.
Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis echoed these anxieties, saying his country was looking for more clarity from NATO about where the Baltics stand.
“We want to see a clear NATO strategy, and we want to see where the Baltic states fit into this strategy,” he said.
Lithuanian President Adamkus said the Baltics fully expected to be NATO members within four to five years, but said they should prepare to defend themselves on their own in the meantime.
“Our three countries shouldn’t just put our hands down and do nothing,” he said. “We should build up our own arm forces so that, if need be, we can defend ourselves and not depend on somebody else.”
Also last week, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott also tried to reassure countries that haven’t yet been invited to join NATO.
He specifically responded to an earlier statement by Lithuanian Speaker Vytautas Landsbergis that NATO’s open-door policy had no credibility.
“I think it is profoundly wrong to say that the open-door statement has no meaning,” he said. “You will see lots of genuine signs coming out of the (April) summit that this is a real enlargement process.”
* In a 38-page report released on February 17, Latvia laid out its general economic plans to secure a place in the European Union.
To the disappointment of policy makers, Latvia failed to win an invitation to hold formal membership talks with the EU. But Latvia was told it stood a good chance of being invited in 1999 if it stuck firmly to the reform path.
In its report, the Latvian government pledged to maintain its conservative fiscal policies, including a near-balanced budget and keeping a stable exchange rate. The report also said that Latvia would strengthen the banking sector and work harder at modernizing Latvian agriculture.
The government anticipated that GDP growth would be around 4 percent for 1999, and then would climb to between 5.0-6.3 percent starting in the year 2000. Officials said inflation would hover around 4.5 percent for several years and then slowly drop to around 3.5 percent by 2003.
* A serial killer in Estonia who said he learned to enjoy murder was convicted and sentenced to just eight years in prison on February 15.
Alexander Rubel killed seven people from 1997 to 1998, targeting drunks or people debilitated by illness. He killed at least one of his victims with an axe.
Rubel was only 17 when he committed the murders and so eight years in prison was the maximum penalty available to prosecutors under Estonian law.
Rubel told authorities he killed his first victim out of curiosity.
“I wanted to see what it was like to kill someone,” he was quoted as saying. “I felt better after that…after killing one, you immediately want more. I liked to kill.”
Court psychologists found that Ruble was of sound mind, although he claimed he had heard voices telling him to kill after inhaling gasoline.
