SDE hold many of the cards in potential unseat of Center Party in Tallinn

For the first time in almost two decades, the prospect of the Center Party no longer holding sway over Tallinn City Government is a real one, though certainly far from a foregone conclusion.
On Thursday, 37 members of the signed a vote of no-confidence in Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart, which will be held in the coming weeks. If he loses, this could see the opposition parties try to form a new coalition. SDE, which is currently in coalition with Center, is being urged to withdraw and and work with the opposition. SDE's leadership is split on the issue.
ERR has summarized the state of play in terms of council seats and possible coalition alignments, which in most cases see SDE playing a vital role.
Tallinn City Council has 79 seats, with the Reform Party, Isamaa, the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) and Eesti 200 in opposition. Center and the Social Democrats (SDE) are in a coalition. Forty seats are needed for a majority.
Center alone, even after its reduced mandate at the last local elections, still holds 34 seats (including Igor Gräzin), by far the most-represented party and in contrast to its situation at the Riigikogu, where it now only has six seats.
The composition of the council has changed quite a bit since the October 2021 local government elections in Estonia, not only due to seismic changes within the Center Party, but as a result of transitions in other parties too.

Looking at the math, the four following eventualities are viable.
1) The Center-SDE bipartite coalition continues. This has been in office since late 2021; prior to that Center had long ruled in isolation in the capital, but failed to win enough seats at the last election to continue that hegemony.
Even after a recent change of heart by Center Party faction member Igor Gräzin (which, like the early spring weather, could change again), Center-SDE would still have a clear majority of 42 (ie. 33+9) seats.
This would be a comfortable option for SDE, as despite being the smaller party, it holds the cards in dictating to the larger partner.
However, this may impact SDE's support rating more generally and going forward, with a European election in June.
2) A quadripartite Reform-SDE-Isamaa-Eesti 200 coalition crystallizes. This would bring a knife-edge of a majority, with 15 Reform seats, nine from SDE, seven from Isamaa, six from Eesti 200 plus Gräzin plus two non-affiliated deputies (Taavi Aas and Tõnis Mölder, both formerly of Center).
Political corridors of power are apparently abuzz at the prospect of SDE getting the mayoral post, more specifically in Jevgeni Ossinovski, as an inducement to switching to this alignment.
3) Next, what might be known in Estonian as a "dwarfish coalition", a "Päkapikkude koalitisioon" emerges, whereby the "dwarves," more or less seven of them (the five other parties plus the two individual camps noted above), join forces to unseat the "giant" Center Party.
Given this would require cooperation between ideologically opposed forces (for instance SDE and EKRE together in office), it could rightly be referred to as a rainbow coalition also.
Regardless of what one might call it, it would have 46 seats, a healthy majority.
4) Igor Gräzin stays with Center, and a Center Party-EKRE coalition of 40 (34+6) seats forms. This is seen as the least likely of the four outcomes, though it is not impossible.
In all these scenarios bar the fourth one, SDE are virtual kingmakers.
The breakdown by party of seats at the 79-mandate Tallinn city council chamber is as follows.
Center Party: 34 deputies minus 1
The Center Party faction at the city council has 34 deputies. However, since Igor Gräzin decided to join those currently opposing Mayor Kõlvart, Center Party can only count on 33 deputies as things stand and assuming no other defections occur.
SDE: Nine deputies
While in October 2021 SDE secured six mandates, this number has now grown to nine, thanks to two defections from Center (former secretary general Andre Hanimägi and former health minister Tanel Kiik), and one from Eesti 200 (Liina Normet).
Reform Party: 15 deputies
Reform has 15 Tallinn city councilors and recently elected Pärtel-Peeter Pere as its leader. The party is however likely chafing over a technicality which saw it gain a member but lose a seat; Maria Jufereva-Skuratovski was one of the Center Party defectors, this time to Reform. However, this coincided with her changing her officially registered place of residence to one which is outside Tallinn, disqualifying her from continuing as a Reform deputy and giving the seat to Center in any case.
Isamaa: Seven deputies
Isamaa won only five seats in Tallinn in October 2021, but since then has gained Jüri Ratas and Argo Luude, meaning that number has grown to seven.
Eesti 200: Six deputies
Eesti 200 has six council members and, like Isamaa, is firmly in the anti-Kõlvart camp.
EKRE: Six deputies
EKRE also underwent some musical chairs, to its loss, after the October 2021 elections. Argo Luude (see above) went to Isamaa, while Center for once got some good news as Kairet Remmak-Grassmann joined its ranks.
Neither move is as radical as it might seem at first glance; the Isamaa "right" dovetails with EKRE to some extent, while Center is arguably a populist party. In any case the three parties were famously in office together at the national level from April 2019 to January 2021.
This leaves EKRE with six Tallinn city councilors, namely: Urmas Espenberg, Mart Kallas, Harri Kingo, Ivan Makarov, Raivo Põhjakivi and Urmas Reitelmann.
Non-affiliated deputies
There are two of these independents as noted, Taavi Aas, a former mayor and former government minister, and Tõnis Mölder, also a former minister.
Both were previously of the Center Party and Mölder joined Isamaa in the wake of Mihhail Kõlvart becoming Center leader last September. However following his being declared a suspect in a bribery case earlier this year, Mölder had to leave Isamaa, having failed his "probationary period" as party leader Urmas Reinsalu put it.
So far both Mölder and Aas have aligned their council chamber votes with the opposition.
The next local government elections are in October 2025, but there are plenty of forces seeking to end the Center Party's reign in the capital well before that date, as the recent no-confidence motion in Kõlvart as mayor demonstrated...
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Editor: Urmet Kook, Andrew Whyte