Estonia’s opposition liberal Reform party won Sunday’s general election, outpacing centre-left Prime Minister Juri Ratas’s party and a surging far-right buoyed by a backlash from mostly rural voters in the Baltic eurozone state.
Led by former MEP Kaja Kallas, Reform garnered 28.8 percent of the vote, well ahead of Ratas’s Centre party on 23 percent, with the far-right EKRE more than doubling its previous election score at 17.8 percent, according to full results on Estonia’s official state elections website.
Two other parties in the race which currently govern in coalition with Ratas, the Social Democrats and conservative Isamaa, respectively took 9.8 percent and 11.4 percent of the vote.
Both could team up with Reform for a 56-seat majority in the 101-member parliament, or holding a combined 60 seats, arch-rivals Reform and Centre could govern together as they have done in the past.
“Now the real work begins to put together the government and start running the country with common sense,” Kallas told public broadcaster ETV/ERR.
Estonia’s opposition liberal Reform party won Sunday’s general election, outpacing centre-left Prime Minister Juri Ratas’s party and a surging far-right buoyed by a backlash from mostly rural voters in the Baltic eurozone state.
Led by former MEP Kaja Kallas, Reform garnered 28.8 percent of the vote, well ahead of Ratas’s Centre party on 23 percent, with the far-right EKRE more than doubling its previous election score at 17.8 percent, according to full results on Estonia’s official state elections website.
Two other parties in the race which currently govern in coalition with Ratas, the Social Democrats and conservative Isamaa, respectively took 9.8 percent and 11.4 percent of the vote.
Both could team up with Reform for a 56-seat majority in the 101-member parliament, or holding a combined 60 seats, arch-rivals Reform and Centre could govern together as they have done in the past.
“Now the real work begins to put together the government and start running the country with common sense,” Kallas told public broadcaster ETV/ERR.
