Everyone in town was invited...

Photo: Erik Prozes / Liis Treimann

At half past six on Saturday evening, after the Estonia Concert Hall had been emptied of candidates, electors, guests and cleaning teams were taking over the premises, leading IRL politicians Margus Tsahkna and Marko Mihkelson were having a conversation in front of the building. They were soon joined by Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas (Reform Party). The men's faces were serious. Among the last to leave the building were leading Center Party women Mailis Reps and Kadri Simson who promptly joined their male colleagues. Chairman of the Conservative People's Party (EKRE) Mart Helme was the last to join in.

Had a club like that ever met before? Hardly. Head of the largest parliament party, Taavi Rõivas, and chairman of the smallest, Mart Helme, exchanged phone numbers before the participants went their separate ways.

While the PM had previously ruled out all manner of cooperation with EKRE, this Saturday's fiasco has set the ground on which Rõivas stands so fiercely aflame that Helme is becoming a legitimate politician.

Prime Minister Rõivas, who heard the results of the first round of voting in the Electoral College wearing a rather grim expression, is facing the most high-stakes weeks of his run of office: it will be very difficult for the government to continue with a measure of credibility should it fail in producing candidates most parliament parties would find acceptable in the first half of the new week.

The Riigikogu will convene to try and elect the president exactly one week from now. Head of the ruling party has the decisive role. He knows that the Center Party's in-house tensions are making the party playful: it wants to play the game in light of its upcoming chairman election, in hopes of making it to the government.

Once politicians had come to terms with the first big surprise – Allar Jõks' victory in the first round – they set about analyzing what had happened. Why had the Rosimannus family's political-technical maneuvers for Kaljurand failed? Who betrayed Center's Marilis Reps who had counted on 85-90 votes and a sure ticket to the second round?

Center Party games

The fact that Conservative People's Party (EKRE) chairman Mart Helme only got 16 votes surprised almost no one but himself. Helme has, however, managed to edge his party out of isolation and closer to eligibility during this campaign; the party's radical edges have been filed into a more palatable shape in the course of debates.'

Matters in the Center Party painted the entire election process a certain shade. If party chairman Edgar Savisaar and secretary-general Oudekki Loone recommended voting for Kallas in the second round, spite had grown too great among Reps' supporters. Missing votes amounted to 7-13.

Because delegates were convinced Savisaar had betrayed Reps in the first round, her supporters probably decided to put Savisaar in his place for his ambition to paint himself as a president-maker.

Had Kallas been elected president, it would have been something Savisaar could have paraded as an achievement that would probably have contributed to his chances of being elected at the party congress. Revenge for losing the Center Party's candidacy to Reps was also sweet.

The Center Party is split between three or four camps. There is talk of rivalry and cool sentiments between Kadri Simson and Jüri Ratas, and Mailis Reps. Reps, whose campaign has now made her an A-list player in Estonian politics, is inevitably sparking envy among recent representatives of Center's in-house opposition.

Especially in light of the upcoming party council and potential extraordinary congress. Had Reps secured passage to the second round of voting on the wings of supporters and protest votes, she would have had a good opportunity to paint herself as the next chairman in light of support in the Electoral College.

Treacherous votes

Fifty-seven unmarked and three spoiled ballot papers show that sending the election back to the Riigikogu could not have been a single camp's handiwork, and that there are more motives and reasons behind it.

Because EKRE's presence is modest in both the Riigikogu and the Electoral College, the party could place themselves outside of recent policy. This means that sinking the election affords them the chance to paint the recent political elite as incompetent. One that cannot find a suitable candidate and elect them.

Dropping blank or spoiled papers into the ballot box is therefore a chance to fight for the greater good of their reputation as an alternative.

A part of delegates who decided not to vote was surely made up of supporters of Marina Kaljurand. „This is Estonian politics in 2016,“ someone from her camp uttered rather gloatingly after the first round.

The chance to deploy the tactics of surrounded terrorists and take down with them as many candidates as possible came in the second voting round – both Jõks and Kallas had previously said they would not run again. Perhaps the latter constituted a mistake as it made the temptation of employing empty ballot papers that much greater.

Kaljurand's new choices

What will happen to the people's favorite, and what will her supporters, who numbered 75 in the first round, do next? Backstage, Marina Kaljurand was offered the position of Estonia's representative in the European Court of Auditors and pole position on the Reform Party's 2019 European Parliament elections list on election day.

People also dreamed about Kaljurand having accepted Rõivas' offer to write down her three weeks of campaigning as a vacation and headed back to the foreign ministry as its master.

Kaljurand's supporters included a lot of electors who wanted a female president and could have supported Reps in the second round had she made it there. The majority of Reform Party electors had probably voted for Kallas already in the first round. Kaljurand's supporters contributed around a dozen empty papers in the second round.

The social democrats, who had 41 electors, probably voted for four different candidates in the first round. It is probable the ballot box also saw a few empty ballot papers from the party.

The only thing that was certain by the end of the intermission was that campaign and party dining rooms without a candidate of their own in the second round left the options of their members open. Everything could happen.

The „party“ with the most electors, that is to say delegates of non-party election coalitions, largely dined with their favored candidates. And they clearly went back into the concert hall to make a choice. Electors from the country so to speak, with some loyal members of real parties, did their work properly so as not to return home empty-handed.

EKRE made it no secret they had no intention of voting for either Jõks or Kallas. At least ten empty ballots from them.

„I know what to do if the president is elected – you stand up and clap – but what to do if he or she is not elected?“ Center Party member Viktor Vassiljev asked.

When Vassiljev's second scenario materialized half an hour later, the closing words of moderator Eiki Nestor were met with sporadic clapping at best, while most people started filing out of the hall. Indeed – what is there to applaud. Security guards who had been sent to serve the new president also had to leave without one.

Some of the flowers meant for the new president were returned, while Allar Jõks' wife was carrying a handful of yellow blossoms.

The day of Tartu parish elector Üllar Loks lasted for 12 hours. The elector from neighboring Tähtvere, Urmas Tartes, picked Loks up a little after 8 a.m. „We headed for Tallinn in an optimistic mood – in hopes of electing the president,“ said first time elector, principal of Lähte School, Loks.

The way home was full of heated discussion. „We were disappointed to say the least and talked about which camp had produced the empty slips – that of Reps or Kaljurand. EKRE alone could not have done it,“ Loks said Saturday evening.

The elector had to give explanations to neighbors, friends. „What can you say? It is clear simple people were disappointed as both Kallas and Jõks were acceptable presidents for people. They cannot understand the reason for this circus,“ Loks echoed his voters. He added that all five candidates would have made acceptable presidents.

The elector from Tartu County was convinced that Estonia would not be left without a president. „The election will have to happen on the go now, and we will either have a president everyone accepts or one no one opposes.“

Should the Riigikogu fail to elect the president for the second time, the two electors will once again share a car to go to Tallinn, the men pragmatically agreed when Tartes dropped Loks off in front of his house a little after 8 p.m.