Elections of the board of the Estonian Center Party's Narva chapter on Wednesday failed because of spoiled ballots and Centrists suspect the person behind it of ties with the Social Democratic Party (SDE), the regional newspaper Pohjarannik says.
Centrists in Estonia's Narva looking for SDE agent in own ranks
4th March 2013, 17:05
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The conference of the Centrist organization in Narva that was held behind closed doors on February 27 reelected Andrus Tamm chairman. Tamm for his part put forward MP Mihhail Stalnuhhin's name whose election would have been helpful to the party ahead of the local polls in October but the latter reportedly declined, citing pressure of work in parliament. Nonetheless, he agreed to stay on as deputy chairman.
The election of the board was dogged by scandal, the paper says. After a drawn-out count of ballots and some confusion about their number, 11 ballot papers were declared invalid because of too many ticks. Altogether 152 ballots had been registered, corresponding to the number of participants.
Owing to suspicion of falsification, other ballot papers are now being checked.
"This could hardly have happened before the meeting," the reelected leader of Narva Centrists said. "I myself delivered the unmarked ballots sent in a closed box from Tallinn. I opened it in the presence of witnesses - all the ballot papers were unmarked. Furthermore, at that point nobody knew yet who would be running for the board. We believe it was done by some member of the vote counting committee."
The vote counting committee was chaired by member of the Narva City Council Aleksandr Nikolajev.
As of now, the board of the Center Party's Narva chapter includes all city leaders - chairman and several members of the city council, the mayor and other influential persons, nine people altogether. Had the vote been declared valid, four new members would have been elected, among them Nikolajev.
Nikolajev had no comment to offer to Pohjarannik. "It's a closed meeting, and I'm currently out of town," he explained.
The Narva organization of the Center Party has around 400 members at present. As the election of board members fell through the work of the conference is unfinished. One of the participants, Jelena Valme, told the paper that many members were even before the start of the conference aware that some kind of special situation would occur. "It was planned. It's unpleasant that this was done by Centrists who want to weaken our party so as to collaborate with some other party later on," she said.
Valme did not withhold the name of the "other" party. The way the leader of the regional organization, Andrus Tamm, as if held a dispute with Social Democrat MP Jevgeni Ossinovski throughout his report to the conference wasn't to her liking at all. Ossinovski intends to rise to power in Narva in October.
"The largest party in Narva since long ago, it turns out, is putting forth arguments to a party that is not represented with a single member in the city council or the city government. It sounded like an apology to Ossinovski which I found very unpleasant," Valme said.