"The current leadership of the Center Party has not submitted to Savisaar's manipulations and they have developed a clear image of the former chairman," Aeg was quoted by party spokespeople as saying. "The Center Party should finally find the courage within themselves and remove the bribe-taker according to their statutes.

"I am precluding any kind of cooperation with Edgar Savisaar, regardless of how he will run in Tallinn," the IRL candidate continued. "Savisaar has been suspended from his post as mayor on suspicion of corruption and his trial is ongoing. In principle I plan to have nothing to do in any form with that kind of person."

Aeg said that it is one thing for a person to be suspected of a crime, but another thing entirely when it comes to what kind of politics the individual has promoted in Tallinn. "While the goal of IRL and myself is a rapidly developing European- and Estonian-minded Tallinn, Savisaar has always looked toward the Kremlin and consistently hindered the victory of Estonian-mindedness with suspicious means."

The IRL MP recalled that members of Savisaar's city government had previously cooperated with the pro-Russian Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor) group. "By founding the NGO Russian School in Estonia, they worked toward hindering the transition to the Estonian language in schools," he explained. "The Kremlin did the same in Latvia and much more successfully — a total of 18,000 signatures were collected to support the Russian language! This kind of political corruption is even more dangerous to Tallinn and Estonia than bribe-takers."

The 2017 local elections will take place in Estonia on Oct. 15.