Membership of hopeful Biodiversity Party approaching 200 people
Membership of the Biodiversity Party, a movement hoping to establish itself as a political party ahead of the 2019 Riigikogu elections, is approaching 200 as its founders continue to recruit new members.
The number of members is approaching 200, Toomas Trapido, a member of the group, told BNS on Monday.
"We have not given up and hope to gather the necessary 500 members by November," he said. "But we have postponed the first larger meeting from 27 October to 10 November."
Trapido noted that the meeting to be held in Türi on 10 November does not directly have to do with the founding of the party.
"We are in close communication with the registration department and it turns out that the process of founding a party has changed slightly nowadays — that is, we simply have to gather 500 members with applications and then submit those documents to the registry," he explained. "Therefore, the meeting in November will likely be more of a content meeting."
Trapido said that the party has to elect a chairperson and a board as well as approve party statutes. "But it is likely that a founding meeting with 500 people does not have to be held," he said. "The board, chair and statutes — this can be done with a smaller group, it turns out. The procedure has changed and we have been communicating closely with the registration department, and new procedural information has been issued from there."
At the end of August, several societal figures under the leadership of former Free Party leader and MP Artur Talvik decided to establish a new political party. In addition to Talvik and Anzori Barkalaja, director of the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy, the group also includes Roy Strider, Rainer Kuuba, Airi Hallik-Konnula, Mart Jüssi, Toomas Trapido and Mati Kose, people known to the public primarily for their environment-related activities.
The Estonia 200 movement, which is also seeking to establish itself as a political party, announced on Monday that it has reached the required 500 members and the party will be established at a meeting to be held on 3 November.
According to a survey commissioned by BNS and Postimees and conducted by Kantar Emor in mid-October, support for the hopeful Biodiversity Party was 0%, while Estonia 200 garnered the support of 5.4% of respondents.
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Editor: Aili Vahtla
