UK daily: Reform Party's trailblazing Riigikogu member

A young Reform Party MP has been making waves on the Estonian political scene over the past year, according to an article published on the website of British newspaper The Guardian.
Hannah Lahe (pictured) was first elected to the Riigikogu from the Reform Party's list at the March 5, 2023 general election. In the intervening year, she has emerged as one of the Baltic country's most outspoken, energetic and interesting politicians, the Guardian article says.
As with politicians in the Baltics, Russia's war on Ukraine is uppermost in her mind: "My generation's heart aches for Ukraine, not because we lived through a war, but because we have the negative imprint of Russian invasion from our heritage. It matters to everyone who is Estonian how things are going in Ukraine," she told the daily.
Ukrainian victory is the only path to securing Europe: "There really isn't any other option," Lahe added.
Lahe mentioned hopes she says have been placed in her to do something radical or revolutionary, for instance regarding climate, while she had already done so in leading the fight to enact same-sex marriage in Estonia, she says.
"I still remember the day; the feelings, the applauding. It was a big day. It brought Estonia into the value room of Europe, western countries and other democratic countries that have had this for decades," Lahe said, recounting the passing of the relevant law in summer 2023.
Lahe also says she, like her party leader and Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, understands the importance of social media, going a step further in using that channel as a tool to gain traction on protests, rather than posting more day-to-day events.
She even went viral last summer* after a protest over parking spaces outside the Riigikogu, the article reports.
The Estonian business sector, known for its abundance of startups and tech unicorns, is also far better equipped to push forward climate issues than are politicians, Lahe said, a situation she described as "weird."
Lahe, aged 23, would not have remembered the end of the Soviet occupation in the early 1990s, the piece also covered this and based on her grandmother's recollections. For instance, Estonians rushed to stare at bananas, enthralled by the arrival of this new, exotic fruit, the piece states. "People were standing in line sometimes not even to buy, but just to have a look at them. Those who would buy them would not even eat them because it was such a big thing," Lahe said.
The Guardian article appeared on Wednesday this week and was subsequently disseminated in a piece published by portal Delfi on the Thursday. This included questions over the statements about the descriptions of the relative poverty in Estonia at the time of independence, and also over Lahe's apparent leading role in radical change.
Lahe said that she had not seen the final draft of the article and had asked for it to be changed, and qualified various claims attributed to her in the piece.
Lahe won 1,050 votes in the Haabersti, Põhja-Tallinn, and Kristiine electoral district on March 5, 2023. She had been sitting as a Tallinn councilor in the Kristiine district since 2021 and chaired its environment and climate committee.
* While not mentioned in the piece, Lahe's second name also translates as "cool," in Estonian.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
Source: The Guardian, Delfi