Online elections have become seriously discredited in the light of the latest scandal of the Reform Party, leader of the opposition Center Party and mayor of Tallinn Edgar Savisaar said ahead of a meeting on Friday of leaders of political parties called by the president.
Savisaar described the MEP Kristiina Ojuland, expelled by Reform from its ranks over the scandal related to vote-rigging in online voting in Reform's internal polls, as victim of e-elections. "I'm waiting for clear-cut positions from the president and I hope that this won't be a new ice cellar process. Ice cellar didn't produce any results," Savisaar said ahead of the meeting with the president.
The leader of the Center Party said the crisis was not a crisis of political parties and what happened in the Reform Party did not show that all parties had degenerated. "If we look at ratings, the popularity of government parties has declined and that of opposition parties increased. So we're rather speaking of a change of government," he said.
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has summoned chairs of parliamentary parties to his Kadriorg residence on Friday to discuss the domestic policy situation in Estonia.
"The situation is extremely worrying and this is a question of the credibility of Estonia's party democracy," the president said on Facebook.
The president issued the call on Tuesday amid a scandal of voting fraud in internal leadership elections of the Reform Party in the course of which the leader of the party, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, and MEP Kristiina Ojuland, member of the governing board, accused one another of lying. On Wednesday the board of the senior ruling coalition member expelled Ojuland from the party's ranks.