Estonia’s new coalition government has been sworn in by the first female prime minister since the Baltic nation regained its independence in 1991.
The 15-member cabinet of Kaja Kallas, a 43-year-old lawyer and former Member of the European Parliament, was approved in the Riigikogu legislature with 101 seats, after being appointed by President Kersti Kaljulaid.
The center-right reform party, chaired by Kallas, and the left-wing Center Party, Estonia’s two largest political parties, struck a deal on Sunday to form a government to replace the previous cabinet led by center leader and former prime minister Jüri Ratas. that collapsed this month as a result of an alleged corruption scandal.
In addition to Kallas’ prime minister, both parties have seven ministerial portfolios in the cabinet. The government gathers a comfortable majority in parliament.
Kallas’s cabinet has no time to rest on its laurels as it will take a little over two years to resolve a significant number of issues and make its mark in this European Union and as a NATO member before the next general election in March 2023.
One of the immediate priorities of the government is to address the worsening situation of the coronavirus in Estonia and the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic.
The Reform Party, a business and entrepreneurship party that embraces liberal economic policies, emerged as the winner of the 2019 general election in Estonia led by Kallas, but was outwitted by the Center Party, which formed a three-party coalition with the populist right-wing EKRE. party and the conservative fatherland party.
But Ratas’s government, which took office in April 2019, was shaky from the start due to the strong rhetoric of the nationalist EKRE, the country’s third largest party operating on an anti-immigration and anti-EU agenda. EKRE leaders, Mart Helme and his son Martin, brought the government to the brink of collapse at least twice.
Ratas’s government was eventually overthrown on January 13 by an alleged corruption scandal in his own party involving an official suspected of accepting a private donation for the party in exchange for political favor on a property development in the port area of Ratas. the capital. Tallinn.
Kallas has emphasized gender balance in the formation of the new cabinet, placing several women in key positions, including Keit Pentus-Rosimannus of the reform as Finance Minister and Eva-Maria Liimets, Estonia’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic, as Foreign Minister. Affairs.
Estonia, a nation of 1.3 million inhabitants, is now also one of the few countries in the world where both the head of state and the government are female.
That doesn’t necessarily have to be long, however, as Estonian lawmakers meet in September to elect a new president to the parliament. Kaljulaid, who took office in October 2016, has not yet announced whether she will stand for re-election for another five-year term.