 C00174675
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 Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1993
 Document 15 of 19                                         Page   1
 Classification:   UNCLASSIFIED       Status:        [STAT]
 Document Date:    06 Sep 93          Category:      [CAT]
 Report Type:      JPRS report        Report Date:
 Report Number:    FBIS-USR-93-124    UDC Number:
 Author(s):  Bjarne Nitovuori: "There Are No Parties in Estonia"]
 Headline:  Taagepera, POSTIMEES Editor View October Elections
 Source Line:  934K2346B Helsinki HUFVUDSTADSBLADET in Swedish 6 Sep
 93 p 5
 Subslug:  [Article by Bjarne Nitovuori: "There Are No Parties in
 Estonia"]
 FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE:
 1.  [Article by Bjarne Nitovuori: "There Are No Parties in
 Estonia")
 2.  [Text] Tartu-One year after the new Estonia's first democratic
 parliamentary elections, it is not yet possible to speak of a stable
 constellation of parties.
 3.  "There really are no political parties in Estonia. The ones that
 -exist--are --very--young;--and--they-exist-onlX--in-_the_-parl-iament in_--_--
 Tallinn and to some extent in Tartu, but not at all in the rural
 areas," says Vahur Kalmre, editor in chief of the Tartu newspaper
 POSTIMEES and one of Estonia's foremost political analysts.
 4.  For example, when the Social Democratic Party's leader, Minister
 of Social Affairs Marju Lauristin, is active in Tartu, so is the
 Social Democratic Party. But now she spends 99 percent of her time in
 Tallinn.
 5.  Political expert Rein Taagepera, who is a professor at Tartu
 University, also feels that parties in the true sense do not yet
 exist in Estonia-instead, what exists are groups surrounding strong
 personalities. According to Taagepera, this is because there are not
 really any social classes.
 6.  He also feels that the division into government parties and
 opposition parties in the current parliament is artificial.  That
 kind of classification works only in a two-party system.
 7.  In a multiparty system, parties that are not in the government
 can be either opposition parties or neutral. But in Estonia, Edgar
 Savisaar tried to unite all the noncoalition parties in an opposition
 bloc. Doing so involved cooperation with Estonia's Citizens Party and
 UNCLASSIFIED      Approve for Release     as
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 its leader, Juri Toomepuu. That was one reason why Taagepera left
 Savisaar's Center Party in April. But just a year ago, Taagepera was
 the presidential candidate for Savisaar's People's Front.
 9.  The next big political event in Estonia will be the local
 elections on 17 October.
 10.  "It is very probable that the parties now in power in the
 Riigikogu and the government will lose. But that is not likely to
 have any effect at the national level-meaning new elections or a new
 government," says Kalmre.
 11.  The reason is party structure-the fact that the parties operate
 mainly in the capital. The elections will be won by prominent people
 who can promise improvements in connection with local issues.
 12.  Many of those probable winners are people close to former Prime
 Minister Tiit Vahi and his Coalition Party. They are people who were
 in prominent positions even back in the Soviet era, and they are not
 so much politicians as they are experts, kolkhoz leaders, and so on.
 13.  In the parliamentary elections a year ago, individuals of that
 --type--united- around -the-election-coal tion__.Kindel _Kodu _(Secure Home) ,
 which has now split up but whose presidential candidate was
 then-President Arnold Ruutel.
 14.  In Tallinn, they have grouped themselves into the Raeklubi (City
 Hall Club), with Mayor Jaak Tamm as their leader.
 15.  "Anyone who knows anything about politics knows that Jaak Tamm
 and Tiit Vahi are very close to each other," says Kalmre.
 16.  The corresponding position in Tartu is occupied by Tiit Veeber,
 a businessman who is also an official in the agency that handles
 supplies of energy, water, and so on.
 17.  "In the parliamentary elections, securing Estonia's
 independence was the central issue. In the local elections, the
 issues will be how to get hot water to households. That is something
 that Veeber knows all about."
 18.  The fact that some members of the former nomenklatura are
 expected to make a comeback at the local level can perhaps be
 explained as a phenomenon paralleling Communist leader Algirdas
 Brazauskas' return to power in Lithuania. But there are also
 differences. Kalmre does not believe that Estonia's former Communist
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 leader, Vaino Valjas, is going to be an Estonian Brazauskas.
 19.  What does resemble events in Lithuania is that Arnold Ruutel may
 eventually return with the backing of the group surrounding Vahi. He
 is still very popular.
 20.  Do Not Elect Only Estonian-Minded Candidates
 21.  There is also considerable advance interest in the question of
 how the local elections will turn out in the Russian-dominated areas,
 especially in the northeast and in Paldiski, which until very
 recently was still a closed Russian military town.
 22.  All residents who register have the right to vote, but only
 Estonian citizens can be candidates. In the Russian-dominated
 localities, many residents are not citizens.
 23.  Both Kalmre and Taagepera consider it a good sign that so many
 noncitizens have registered to vote.
 24.  Paldiski has been considered problematical because the Estonian
 authorities do not have a clear picture of who lives there. The
 government therefore decided to propose that the parliamentary
 elections be postponed in Paldiski, but a few days later it changed
 its-mind._
 25.  "It was a good decision. If they had suspended the elections in
 Paldiski, the current leaders in Sillamae, Kohtla-Jarve, and Narva
 would also have had a reason to suspend the elections in their areas,
 too," says Kalmre.
 26.  In Narva and the other towns in the northeast, the situation is
 not as tense as has been reported in the West, according to Kalmre.
 He points out that there are many different groups of Russians there
 and that not all of them support Narva leader Vladimir Chuykin.
 27.  "The only thing Chuykin and his group are interested in is
 holding on to power. That is why it helps them if the situation is
 unstable and the Estonian Government fails completely as a result.
 But if the government and parliament remain calm, those who represent
 a more moderate line than Chuykin will be supported in the election.
 The problem is that there are no outstanding leaders on that side,"
 says Kalmre.
 28.  Rein Taagepera considers the biggest danger to be the chance
 that voters in Narva and the other towns will elect only
 Estonian-minded candidates. It is important that representatives of
 Chuykin and his supporters also be elected.
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 29.  "Until now the leadership in Narva has been more anti-Estonian
 than the town's residents. That situation should not reverse itself
 now: The leadership should not be more Estonian-minded than the
 population," says Taagepera.
 31.  Tartu-Tartu has dozed off and is not playing the same role as
 generator of ideas in the Estonian political debate that it did a few
 years ago, says Vahur Kalmre, editor in chief of the Tartu newspaper
 POSTIMEES.
 32.  There has traditionally been rivalry between Estonia's capital,
 Tallinn, and the country's second-largest city, Tartu. Their rivalry
 can be compared to that between Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia,
 Stockholm and Goteborg in Sweden, and perhaps Helsinki and Tampere/
 Turku in Finland.
 33.  Tartu is described as the city of ideas, while Tallinn is the
 city of power. This may be because there is a humanities-oriented
 university in Tartu, while university education in Tallinn is more
 technically oriented. Another factor during the Russian era was that
 the party's grip was not as strong in Tartu as in Tallinn.
 34.  "Historically, that is true. But at the moment, Tartu is not
 playing the same role that it did five years ago, for example, when
 the People's Front (Rahvarinne) emerged.  Most of the People's
 Front's ideas were hatched in Tartu at the time."
 35.  Nov a great many of the most prominent personalities in Tartu
 have moved to Tallinn. This applies, for example, to Marju Lauristin,
 Ulo Laanoja, Lagle Parek, Viktor Niitsoo, and Enn Tarto.
 36.  In the 1960's, the so-called sociology group, which included
 Lauristin, Mikk Titma, and Ulo Vooglaid, among others, was active at
 the university. Back in 1965, together with Tartu's newspaper, which
 was called EDASI at the time, that group conducted the first public
 opinion poll anywhere in the Soviet Union.
 37.  Tartu's special role during the Soviet era was obvious from,
 among other things, the fact that articles that could not be
 published in Tallinn could be printed in EDASI- for example, an
 article on UFO's by Tunne Kelam, who is now a well-known politician
 in the ERSP (National Independence Party) and deputy speaker of
 parliament.  Debates on the size of families and the number of
 children could also be carried in EDASI but not in Tallinn's
 newspapers.
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 38.  The best-known example from more recent times was the program
 for an independent Estonian economy within the Soviet Union, known as
 the IME [self-managing Estonia]. It could not be published in the
 party's main newspaper RAHVA HAAL, even though one of the authors,
 Siim Kallas, was that newspaper's assistant editor in chief at the
 time.
 39.  "So Edgar Savisaar drove to Tartu and saw to it that the
 article was published in EDASI," Kalmre said.
 40.  The fact that Tartu has now dozed off slightly is also explained
 by Kalmre as being due to the circumstance that the university's last
 three rectors have been technically oriented. But now the university
 has a new rector, Peeter Tulviste, who may get the city to wake up
 again. He is a classical scholar and was one of the signers of the
 Letter of the 40 in 1980-the protest by Estonian intellectuals
 against the Russianization policy of the Brezhnev era.
 41.  "He is a wise and modern man, and I believe that something is
 going to change at the university."

