The Baltic News Service has it from Reform Party chairman Hanno Pevkur that they will most likely have decided on Rõivas’s successor by then. Rõivas will get a chance to make his resignation official in the Riigikogu’s next sitting on Monday next week, Oct. 16.

Rõivas announced his resignation as the Riigikogu’s deputy speaker on Thursday following a day of media reports about improper conduct of some of the male members of a trade delegation to Malaysia and Singapore. He said that he will remain an MP for the Reform Party.

Rõivas told Postimees in an interview on Thursday evening that he will not quit parliament, as he had secured his seat with a substantial personal mandate.

In its Thursday edition daily Eesti Päevaleht ran an eyewitness account of a party of members of an Estonian delegation in Malaysia to a bar in Kuala Lumpur, reporting inappropriate behavior on the part of some of the men of the delegation (ERR News reported).

One of the men accused of harassment is former prime minister Taavi Rõivas (Reform), who has since said in several interviews that the story as purported by the paper is an “exaggeration”, though he never clearly refuted the events described.

Reform chairman Hanno Pevkur told BNS that the party’s parliamentary group would meet on Monday and also discuss Rõivas’s replacement. The next few days the party would focus on the local elections (Sunday Oct. 15 is election day). Pevkur called on everyone who hasn’t already done so to go and vote.