The majority of Estonians, including the president, are of the opinion that Kaja Kallas should not continue as prime minister. In this story, experts assess the severity of the crisis.
TALLINN After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, one European prime minister quickly emerged with his strict line. She was Estonia’s first female prime minister, leader of the Reform Party Kaja Kallas.
The 46-year-old Kallas rarely gave fiery speeches that week about the importance of supporting Ukraine and opposing Russia. In the EU, he always pushed for new sanctions against Russia. The prime minister called on Estonian companies to give up all transactions even slightly related to Russia.
Until, in August of this year, there was a bang. The Estonian public radio company ERR revealed that Kallas’ spouse Arvo Hall too co-owned The Stark Logistics company had continued to transport goods to Russia throughout the war of aggression.
Hallik has since sold his share in the company, but Kaja Kallas has been subjected to the worst robbery of her life. Two thirds of Estonians would like him to resign. Even the president Alar Karis has statedthat Kallas should have resigned as soon as the scandal broke.
We asked two experts how serious the political crisis is going on in Estonia, whether Kaja Kallas will have to resign and what the consequences would be.
– It was a really serious thing. It was most serious for the Prime Minister and his family personally, says Annika Arras, who is the CEO of the Estonian consulting company Miltton New Nordics and a long-term communications expert.
Arras has run the reform party’s election campaigns until 2015. has ensured that neither the reform party nor Kallas personally is a client of Miltton New Nordics.
Arras assesses the severity of the crisis on a scale of 1–10:
– It’s there somewhere between nine and ten.
The situation is Arras and a political scientist Tõnis Lehtin made worse by the fact that the prime minister has made a lot of mistakes in handling the crisis.
– He suggests that he is being attacked personally, even though the subject is related to the roles of the prime minister and the state, says Arras.
– The style with which Kallas has approached the media has been very emotional and offensive. In addition, he tried to belittle the subject for a long time, states Leht.
The scandal has left its mark
Regarding the effects of the looting that has been going on for a second month, Leht says that Kaja Kallas’ position has weakened in domestic politics and to some extent in foreign politics as well.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister’s resignation seems less likely every day. Kallas himself flatly refuses to resign. Nor has a government crisis arisen in Estonia, because the reform party’s government partners, the Social Democrats and the Estonia 200 party, have said that Kallas’ fate is a matter for the reform party.
A palace revolution within the Reform Party is also quite unlikely.
– Although Kallas’s personal popularity has decreased, the scandal has had no effect on the party’s support, Leht says.
According to Annika Arras, Kallas will have to live with the burden of the scandal caused by his spouse for the rest of his life.
– Refusal to resign is his decision. But now he has to accept that someone reminds him of this every now and then. This will never go away, says Arras.
Greater international visibility with Marin’s dance video
The scandal has had a smaller impact on Estonia’s landscape than it initially seemed.
– When the crisis started, the feeling was that this was going to be a big deal in terms of foreign policy. But if I compare Sanna Marini dance video, it had much more visibility in the world than Kaja Kallas’s crisis, says Arras.
However, if Kaja Kallas gets tired of living in a constant crisis, the most likely place for a face-saving resignation would be in June of next year during the European Parliament elections, according to Tõnis Lehti.
– If Kallas then wanted to become an EU commissioner, for example, the resignation could be disguised in order to move forward in his career, Leht estimates.
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