Helir-Valdor Seeder and co-guest Jevgeni Ossinovski (Social Democratic Party) agreed that it is impossible to suspend voting rights without a constitutional amendment.

"The Social Democrats, Eesti 200 and the Reform Party have agreed to put together a legal framework for suspending the voting rights of Russian and Belarusian citizens without amending the constitution. My claim, after talking to a lot of experts, is that this cannot be done. There is no legal way to suspend voting rights in Estonia without changing the constitution. Because the coalition agreement promises to achieve it without constitutional amendments, it is an unrealizable declaration," Seeder said, adding that Isamaa supports taking away the local government council elections voting rights of Russian and Belarusian citizens for good, instead of just suspending them.

Ossinovski said that it was the position of the Social Democrats (SDE) already during coalition negotiations that the voting rights suspension cannot be done without amending the constitution, while the Reform Party wished to conduct further analysis.

"The analysis was completed, and it indeed turned out that such an extensive manipulation of the electorate is impossible without changes to the constitution. As a result, it is now clear at least that your (Isamaa's) relevant bills for revoking voting rights outside constitutional law are also unconstitutional," Ossinovski said, remarking that the debate has shifted onto whether it is sensible to seek a rapid constitutional amendment.

Seeder said that a lot of time has been allowed to go to waste in the process. The politician said that Isamaa tried to convince the Social Democrats and the Reform Party of the impossibility of suspending voting rights through simple legislative change years ago.

"We argued about it in the previous coalition, before the elections. Had we opted for either solution, the debate would by now have moved through the justice chancellor, president or the Supreme Court. But the coalition and the parties that form it have not pursued any initiatives and are instead sending signals of there being discussions and a public debate. No action is being taken to start the process," he said.

"Isamaa is willing to go down the path of amending the constitution if there is sufficient support for it in the Riigikogu. We know that it takes longer, and that time is running out for making the change before the next local elections. It is still theoretically possible, while it's a long process to get it done during the term of this composition [of the Riigikogu] even if we expedite it."

Could suspending voting rights be a security risk?

Seeder and Ossinovski disagreed on whether stripping citizens of aggressor states of their right to vote would reinforce or harm national security.

"The Social Democrats have said that even though the subject matter is entirely understandable in the current geopolitical situation, it entails myriad risks, which need to be carefully considered before a public decisions is made."

"But indeed, we and many other sides [to the debate] believe that such a step would not bring us closer to the desired goal. While it can be suggested that Russian citizens' right to vote in local elections is a security threat, revoking it might work to drive away Russian-speaking people who are loyal to Estonia for precisely the opposite result of what was sought," he added.

Ossinovski said that Estonia should tackle actual security threats, instead of casting a shadow over a part of society.

"We know – also from the recent integration monitoring – that most Russian citizens living in Estonia are loyal, well-integrated or so-called Russian-speaking patriots who might not speak enough Estonian because of their age or because they live in [predominantly Russian-speaking] Narva, while they are very much on our side in this," the SDE politician said.

"The reality today, which the monitoring confirms, is that the most critical, most difficult target group is dominated by Estonian citizens, Russian-speaking Estonian citizens. That is where we have the biggest problem today, not with citizens of the Russian Federation. The risk this proposal entails, to which we are drawing attention, is that people who have so far been loyal might somehow switch sides after being labeled a suspicious element, which would amount to a negative result," Ossinovski explained.

But Helir-Valdor Seeder believes revoking the voting right would help reinforce national security.

"It works to motivate those Russian citizens who really want to have a say in how society, their local government is organized. Take Estonian citizenship, learn the Estonian language, take the constitutional exam, really integrate into society and then be given the right to have a say in local matters – it is motivation first and foremost, which I consider to be entirely right, as well as a certain token of loyalty," Seeder said.

Estonia has around 69,000 people with Russian or Belarusian citizenship.

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