Reform Party MPs leaving supervisory boards of state-owned companies
After the Social Democrats and IRL broke the standstill in the government on Friday of the debate surrounding MPs appointed supervisory board members by ministers of their own parties, those board members currently serving as Reform Party MPs wrote in a statement on Sunday that they were going to ask to be recalled.
Though all coalition parties were in agreement last week that the appointment procedure was unconstitutional, the Reform Party, who after 11 years in government has by far the largest share of MPs sitting on state company boards, did not agree that immediate action should be taken and those board members recalled.
Instead, they hoped the junior coalition parties could be convinced of a solution quickly put together late last week, which suggested to put a parliamentary committee in between the appointing minister and the board member to be appointed.
This was seen as nothing more but cosmetics by the Social Democrats and IRL, and as an attempt of the Reform Party to protect its positions on the supervisory boards in question.
To break the standstill, the ministers of the Social Democrats and IRL began issuing decrees on Friday afternoon to recall all Reform Party members from the supervisory boards of the companies and funds within their areas of jurisdiction.
Reform Party chairman and Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas, along with other leading members of the party, called the action “premature” and a “substitute activity”. Nevertheless, it seems to have had the desired effect: In a statement published on Monday, the Reform Party’s members of those supervisory boards announced they were going to ask to be recalled.
The signatories, members of the Riigikogu Aivar Sõerd, Kalle Palling, Meelis Mälberg, Peep Aru, Remo Holsmer, Toomas Kivimägi, Valdo Randpere, and Yoko Alender, wrote that they were leaving because the currently ongoing fight that was “loaded with political game slogans” was “neither in the interest of the Estonian people, parliament, nor that of the businesses”.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn