Ratas: Center and IRL in same government would have seemed impossible four years ago
Prime Minister Jüri Ratas said in an interview with daily Postimees that he would work with his fellow party members towards making the Center Party a regular Estonian party, one that is not in court every day, and that the coalition stood for a more united Estonia.
Ratas said that he would like the party to be able with its real task, namely to work towards its goals and to make policy. He added that he valued the cooperation with his coalition partners very highly.
Prompted by Postimees’ mention of the Center Party’s finances, in particular the last occurrence two years ago when then-chairman Edgar Savisaar and fellow party member Kalev Kallo were trying to get money from Russia, Ratas said that such behavior was out of the question. Thanks to state support, like other parties get it, and the contributions of its members, the Center Party was doing well.
He acknowledged that the Center Party was in a complicated financial state, and owed a lot of money. Hopefully the Center Party would become a regular party that did not have to be in court or in touch with its lawyers every day, Ratas said.
Asked why Kallo was still chairman of the Tallinn city council, the prime minister said that the party run by him would not be one where the chairman handed out public positions. Kallo was where he was because the council had elected him.
After the coalition agreement was signed, Center Party MEP Yana Toom commented that the other coalition partners had got too many ministerial positions. According to the contract, each of the coalition parties, no matter its size or representation in parliament, got five ministries.
Ratas said he believed that the substance and the positions of the coalition were more important to party members than the number of ministers. A possible result of this coalition could be a more united Estonia, in the sense of the state and the capital working together again, but also in the sense of the country’s two language groups feel as one country.
A more connected Estonia, too — which had to mean more than just Tallinn and Tartu being connected. Ratas hinted that connections to the remaining regions of the country mattered just as much.
Commenting on the economic situation, Ratas pointed out that plenty of people, ranging from analysts at the Bank of Estonia to individual businessmen, had said that changes were necessary. Everybody agreed that the current model wasn’t sustainable, and that what had worked so far wouldn’t work in the future.
The prime minister added that the fact that the Center Party and the Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL) were standing together at Christmas 2016, ready to get things moving, was an example of this kind of unity, as just years ago, this would have seemed impossible.
Again going back to Toom’s comment, Ratas said that the distribution of ministries depended a lot on the prime minister, and that his personal management style was based on the one used in sports, and in particular basketball. “If you want that your team is successful, then every member that belongs to that group of 12 players needs to know that they are appreciated and needed. And that’s how it is in politics as well.”
In the coalition it couldn’t be allowed that members felt they got less, and they didn’t get less, Ratas said. If the point was to talk about who’s bigger in parliament, then in terms of simple positions, the Center Party had more anyway. It also couldn’t be forgotten that they were the ruling party, that of the prime minister.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn
Source: ERR, BNS