Since the moment the current government became a minority government, the question of why the opposition still does not distrust the government and replace it in one way or another with some other government has noticeably increased. The possibility would exist mathematically, and there is much talk, but it is not visible or not likely that it would happen.

Elections are rarely won in the way some of the more common understandings of democracy prescribe to us. Decisions are not made in such a way that parties present their political programs and then the public discusses them and voters finally decide in favor of the party politically closest to them. Reality is much more multifaceted.

Before elections, a complicated battle takes place over voters' attention and memory. The object of that attention or memory is often not political positions, but rather various events and situations that have the potential to push voters in one direction or another. Not only with reason, but also with emotions. What is said out loud does not have to match what the battle is actually about. Perhaps we do not want democracy to function this way, but reality is often exactly like that.

The stakes are high, because voters' memory and attention can change quickly, and with that also what is important and what is unimportant. Larger changes in recent history have come rather from factors that are not under anyone's control, but there is always an attempt to shape events and context accordingly.

Let us recall even the coronavirus crisis, under the cover of which measures restricting people's freedoms became possible overnight — measures that in any other situation would have provoked much stronger public outrage. People's attention was elsewhere. Or let us recall the beginning of the war in Ukraine, which quickly made voters forget how dissatisfied they had been at that moment with then‑Prime Minister Kaja Kallas's government and the Reform Party's energy and coronavirus policies.

Even now, a battle is underway over whether to keep or change voters' memory and attention. The opposition wants voters under no circumstances to forget what happened in the previous elections — broken promises and the hiding of their real political intentions. That voters would not forget Kaja Kallas's Russia‑transit scandal or the current artillery‑shell procurement scandal. That they would not forget how disappointed they have been in the governing parties over the past three years.

The government itself wants to divert attention from all of this as much and as quickly as possible. This has not yet succeeded, but one can be sure that they will try at any cost. Experience shows that fear often works very well. The previous elections were largely decided by fear — fear of war and fear of a different kind of government, which was very effectively instilled in part of the voters. If it worked once, then certainly the thought arises that maybe it will work again.

Let us now return to distrust of the government and changing the government. All parties behave self‑interestedly; this is natural and normal, and it must be so. Democracy is born from what and how happens between parties. It is an emergent phenomenon at the system level, not a property of the system's components. What matters is that the system is designed so that self‑interest cannot be entrenched at the system level.

From the perspective of directing and maintaining attention, no opposition party should want to be in government right now, because it is not in their interest. It would free the Reform Party from the heavy burden of governing and allow them to recover before the elections in the position of an opposition party. It would allow voters to forget why they do not like the current government.

By entering the government, the opposition would put itself in a significantly more difficult position before the elections. One cannot simply gift support to anyone. Except for the exceptional background of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Reform Party has recently been rather weak in the eyes of voters while governing, and has enjoyed high support rather as an opposition party.

Emphasizing the question of distrust directs attention to the fact that we must, until the elections — even if we do not like it — accept this unpopular government. That there is currently no possibility of forming some other government, because the distribution of power in the Riigikogu is exactly as it is. That in Estonia's political system, alongside regular elections, there is no mechanism that would help bring a seriously derailed system back on track. This directs voters' attention to possible shortcomings of the system.

Nor is it in the interest of any opposition party right now to create some cross‑party or apolitical interim government that would govern us until the elections. For the same reason. Such an interim government would potentially be something that saves the Reform Party and frees them from their current difficult role.

Half‑jokingly, one could say that the Reform Party itself — not the opposition — should be the one thinking about the idea of an interim government, but in doing so they would have to briefly admit that they cannot manage governing, and naturally this would have its own negative effect.

In short, over the next five months it is not worth taking some of the more prominent contours of Estonian politics too literally. What is said directly is of course important, but often the talk is simultaneously about something else entirely. Words can also be used to direct attention, to make one forget or remember.

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