SDE: Estonia held back by bickering ministers
Social Democratic MPs Urve Palo and Tanel Talve found that Estonia's development was held back, among other things, by ministries’ rivalry, which would make cooperation between them difficult.
Palo and Talve thought there was neither a common vision nor corresponding goals for state reform, the Baltic News Service reported on Thursday.
Talve, who chairs the parliamentary state reform support group, said that discussions of state reform as a matter of national importance needed to become regular. He voiced the opinion that the Riigikogu's Constitutional Committee should take the leading role in setting the reform in motion and seeing it through.
Palo said the state needed a chief architect with respective rights and obligations to look at the broader picture and make the ministries work together in the interest of common goals. This should be the task of the Prime Minister rather than that of the Finance Ministry, as such a duty would not be left to accountants in the private sector either.
The Social Democrats also expressed the wish that in the course of administrative reform not only the tasks and functions, but also the location of government institutions be reviewed, and that possibilities for relocating more public sector jobs to different regions across the country be given serious consideration.
"Estonia has been engaged in a contest for a long time. A competition for its people, so they would wish to live here, would not leave and, if they have to leave, would want to return here. People must sense that the state exists for them, not the other way around," Palo said.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn
Source: BNS