Estonia’s new bipartisan coalition government has been sworn in as the first female prime minister since the Baltic country regained independence in 1991.
The 15-member cabinet of Kaja Kallas, a 43-year-old lawyer and former MEP, passed the 101-seat Riigikogu legislature after being nominated by President Kersti Kaljulaid.
The center-right reform party, chaired by Kallas, and the center-left party, Estonia’s two largest political parties, struck a deal on Sunday to form a government, replacing the previous cabinet led by the center leader and former Prime Minister Jüri Ratas, who collapsed this month due to an alleged corruption scandal.
Both parties have seven ministerial portfolios in the cabinet, in addition to the post of prime minister in Kallas. The government has a comfortable majority in parliament.
Kallas’s office does not have time to rest on its laurels, as it will have just over two years to deal with a substantial number of issues and leave its mark on this European Union and as a NATO member before the next general elections scheduled for March 2023.
One of the government’s immediate priorities is to address the worsening situation of the coronavirus in Estonia and the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic.
The Reformation party, a pro-business and entrepreneurship party that advocates liberal economic policies, emerged as the winner of Estonia’s 2019 general elections under Kallas’ leadership, but was defeated by the Center party, which formed a three-party coalition with the right populist EKRE party and the conservative party of the Fatherland.
But the Ratas government, which took office in April 2019, was unstable from the start due to strong rhetoric by nationalist EKRE, the country’s third largest party that follows an anti-immigration and anti-EU agenda. EKRE leaders Mart Helme and his son Martin have brought the government to the brink of collapse at least twice.
The Ratas government was eventually overthrown on January 13 by an alleged corruption scandal in his own party, involving an official suspected of accepting a private donation to the party in exchange for a political favor for a real estate development in the capital’s port district. Tallinn.
Kallas emphasized gender balance in the formation of the new cabinet, placing several women in key positions, including Keit Pentus-Rosimannus of the Reform as finance minister and Eva-Maria Liimets, Estonian ambassador to the Czech Republic, as foreign minister.
Estonia, a nation of 1.3 million, is also now one of the few countries in the world where both the head of state and the government are women.
However, this may not necessarily last long, as Estonian lawmakers will meet in September to elect a new president in parliament. Kaljulaid, who took office in October 2016, has not yet announced whether he will seek re-election for another five-year term.