Estonia could very well be readying itself for its first female president. Its opposition liberal Reform party won Sunday's general election, outpacing centre-left Prime Minister Juri Ratas's party and a surging far-right buoyed by a backlash from mostly rural voters in the Baltic eurozone state.
This means, leader of the Reform party Kaja Kallas could become the country's first female president. But, Kallas will have to go through difficult negotiations to form a governing coalition.
Reform garnered 28.8 per cent of the votes, well ahead of Ratas's Centre party on 23 per cent, with the far-right EKRE more than doubling its previous election score at 17.8 per cent, according to full results on Estonia's official state elections website.
The Social Democrats and conservative Isamaa took 9.8 per cent and 11.4 per cent of vote respectively.
Both could team up with Reform for a 56-seat majority in the 101-member parliament, or holding a combined 60 seats, arch-rivals Reform and Centre could govern together as they have done in the past.
"Now the real work begins to put together the government and start running the country with common sense," Kallas said. Kallas a 41-year-old lawyer and former European Parliament member.
"EKRE is not a choice for us", said Kallas and added that Reform would "keep all coalition options on the table", adding that her party had "strong differences with Centre in three areas: taxation, citizenship, and education". As for Ratas, when asked if Centre would consider becoming a junior coalition partner, he said "of course", but declined to elaborate.
Mart Helme, EKRE's leader has publicly expressed xenophobic, sexist and homophobic views. Helme has raised the idea of a Centre-EKRE-Isamaa coalition commanding a 57-seat majority.
Important issues like taxation and public spending along with tensions over Russian-language education for Estonia's sizeable Russian minority and the rural-urban divide had dominated the campaign.
Since Estonia broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union, rival parties Centre and Reform, have alternated in government and even governed together over the nearly three decades.
The far-right EKRE captured support promising to slash income and excise taxes and pushing anti-immigration rhetoric.
Turnout clocked in at 63.1 per cent of eligible voters, the state election commission said.
Both Centre and Reform strongly support Estonia's EU and NATO membership and have favoured austerity to keep spending in check, giving the country the eurozone's lowest debt-to-GDP ratio.
Nixing a progressive tax, business-friendly Reform wants to raise the tax-free monthly minimum exemption and lower unemployment insurance premiums to aid job creation.
Joblessness hovers at just under five per cent while economic growth is expected to slow to 2.7 per cent this year, from 3.9 per cent in 2018.
According to analysts, Kallas' was likely a government with Fatherland and the Social Democrats - Reform's smaller partners in the coalition that ran the country from 2015 to 2017.
Staunchly eurosceptic, EKRE called for an "Estxit" referendum on Estonia's EU membership, although the move would fail in the overwhelmingly pro-EU country.
The party's suspicion of Moscow translates into strong support for NATO membership and the multinational battalion the alliance installed in Estonia in 2017 as a tripwire against possible Russian adventurism.
The Centre party has long been favoured by the Russian minority, comprising around a quarter of the Baltic state's population of 1.3 million.
To avoid losing voters suspicious of Russia, Ratas insists that a 2004 cooperation deal with Vladimir Putin's United Russia party is "frozen". But out of fear of losing the Russian vote, he has refused to rip it up.
The minority counts on Centre to save the existing education system comprising Estonian and Russian-language schools rooted in Soviet times, while Reform and EKRE want to scrap Russian-language teaching.
