Ligi: Center and Reform coalition in Tallinn ‘very unlikely’
Member of the Reform Party’s leadership and former minister Jürgen Ligi said he couldn’t imagine how the parallel universe created by the Center Party in Tallinn could be liquidated with its creators involved, especially as Prime Minister Jüri Ratas (Center) hadn’t been critical of it at all.
In comments made to daily Õhtuleht, Ligi went against speculations that the country’s two biggest parties could run the capital together after the upcoming local elections in autumn this year.
“How could we get rid of the ballast with the Center Party? The party soldiers on the city’s payroll, the Mafia-like environment in the city government? The shameful city media, the municipal bank, the municipal shops, the Municipal Police that’s so far away from the actual police? Or the interference with businesses to satisfy personal interests?”, Ligi asked.
About the city’s own TV channel, Tallinna TV, Ligi said that all it did was damage the city government’s reputation, its programs being “grotesque” and a “parody of the freedom of thought”.
Borough mayor: Center and Reform have little in common
Raimond Kaljulaid (Center), mayor of the North-Tallinn borough of the capital, said that he agreed with Jürgen Ligi in so far as there was little the two parties had in common in Tallinn. Wiping out all that had been done in Tallinn couldn’t be the plan to go ahead with, Kaljulaid said.
In response to Ligi’s comments, Kaljulaid said that as long as the Reform Party insisted on abolishing Tallinn’s free public transport, stop the municipal construction programs, and put an end to other social projects, a coalition was indeed very difficult to imagine.
“So far their only platform has been to close this and put an end to that, but we’ve heard nothing so far what they’re planning to do instead. For this reason alone we couldn’t even talk about possible constructive cooperation,” Kaljulaid said.
He also pointed out that the Reform Party was neither interested nor competent to run the local government. “I can’t imagine Jürgen Ligi as the borough mayor of Haabersti, for example. Perhaps Jürgen Ligi can, but it seems to me that this wouldn’t be good either for him or for Haabersti. I can’t imagine how [former prime minister] Taavi Rõivas or [party chairman] Hanno Pevkur would go ahead with social care services. These are issues the members of the Reform Party have never cared about,” Kaljulaid added.
While the Reform Party had been in government, it had been inequality in Estonia that had grown, not the economy, Kaljulaid pointed out. And now that the party was in opposition, its behavior had become even more worrying.
Editor: Dario Cavegn