Estonia’s new two-party coalition government was sworn in with the first female prime minister since the Baltic nation became independent again in 1991.
The cabinet of 15 members of Kaja Kallas, a 43-year-old lawyer and a former member of parliament, was approved in Riigikogu’s legislature with 101 seats, after he was appointed by President Kersti Kaljulaid.
The center-right reform party, chaired by Kallas, and the left-wing center-right party, the two largest political parties in Estonia, signed an agreement on Sunday to form a government, replacing the previous cabinet led by the center leader and former Prime Minister Jüri Ratas, who collapsed this month over an alleged corruption scandal.
Both parties have seven ministerial portfolios in the cabinet, in addition to Kallas’ first ministerial post. The government gets a comfortable majority in parliament.
Kallas’ cabinet has no time to rest on its laurels, as it will only take more than two years to deal with a significant number of issues and leave its mark in this European Union and as a NATO member before the next general election set for March 2023.
One of the immediate priorities of the government is to address Estonia’s worsening coronavirus situation and the economic unrest causing the pandemic.
The Reform Party, a party for enterprises and entrepreneurship that advocates liberal economic policies, emerged as the winner of the 2019 general election in Estonia led by Kallas, but was manipulated by the Center Party, which formed a tripartite coalition. with the populist judge EKRE party and the conservative Vaderlandssparty.
But the Ratas government, which took office in April 2019, was shaky from the start due to strong rhetoric from the nationalist EKRE, the country’s third largest party working on an anti-immigration and anti-EU agenda . The EKRE leaders, Mart Helme and his son Martin, have brought the government to the brink of collapse at least twice.
Ratas’ government was finally brought down 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 a political favor for a real estate development in the port district of the capital. Tallinn.
Kallas emphasized the gender balance in forming the new cabinet, placing several women in key positions, including Reform’s Keit Pentus-Rosimannus as finance minister and Eva-Maria Liimets, Estonia’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, as foreign minister.
Estonia, a nation of 1.3 million, is also now one of the rare countries in the world where both the head of state and the government are female.
However, this may not necessarily last long, as Estonian lawmakers will meet by September to elect a new president in parliament. Kaljulaid, who took office in October 2016, has not yet announced whether she will run for re-election for five years.