There is a chance that "gray passport" holders and citizens of Russia and Belarus may transform this October's local elections in Estonia into a protest vote following the Riigikogu decision to remove voting rights, political analyst Toomas Sildam told "Aktuaalne kaamera."

Gray passport holders, meaning persons of indeterminate citizenship, will still be able to vote in October, but may protest out of solidarity with Russian and Belarusian citizens, whose voting rights will be stripped once the constitutional amendment is made.

Sildam, a former adviser to President Alar Karis, said that achieving this constitutional amendment marked the end of a very long journey.

"It all started when Isamaa came up with the proposal, quite a while ago. By the way, I think neither Isamaa nor [party leader] Urmas Reinsalu believed it would actually go through. It began to meet success when the Reform Party, led by Kristen Michal, put itself behind the idea. After that, the Social Democrats had no choice either," Sildam said.

Ultimately the Social Democrats (SDE) didn't want to take the blame for the amendment not passing, Sildam added. On the eve of the vote, SDE leader Lauri Läänemets confirmed that his party would not block the amendment by voting against it; it was SDE who had championed retaining voting rights for gray passport holders.

Commenting on Narva Mayor Katri Raik's criticism of the amendment, Sildam said that she has a better sense of what people in Narva think than either he or many others may do.

"What is for sure is that you can't determine who is loyal to Estonia and who is a security threat based just on citizenship. It may now seem that some parties can no longer count on the votes of Russian citizens — not those — but if we consider the [2024] European Parliament elections, KOOS received over 11,000 votes, while Eesti 200 got fewer than 10,000," Sildam added.

KOOS/Vmeste is a pro-Russian party.

The bulk of the people affected by Wednesday's vote live in Ida-Viru County and in Tallinn and its surroundings.

The amendment as it stands will also remove the voting rights from non-EU citizens who had previously held them, with NATO member states mentioned. This means that US and UK citizens, for instance, residing in Estonia will not be able to vote in October's local elections, once the amendment is made.

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