Mari-Liis Jakobson compares recent protests with past examples in Vikerraadio s daily comment. While Estonians have traditionally been slow to protest, some parallels can be drawn, she finds.
Things are happening again. The air is thick with tension and social media full of emotionally riled up men and women some of whom have spent a week protesting. Just as various social debates have done in the past, coronavirus restrictions and planned amendments to the Communicable Diseases Prevention and Control Act (NETS) have split people.
One side finds that while Covid restrictions are burdensome, they are justified, as are amendments necessary for more successful monitoring and control of the pandemic. The other feels measures are insufferable and unjustified and distrust in public authority is mounting with every new step.
On Monday afternoon, the leaders of the Reform and Center parties, Kaja Kallas and Jüri Ratas, signed the coalition agreement between their two parties to form the incoming government.
The pair signed the agreement at 2.30 p.m. in the Riigikogu s White Hall, both wore masks, and then touched elbows rather than shaking hands. At 3 p.m., a sitting of the Riigikogu will begin which will authorize Kallas to form a government. The first thing that we will address is the health crisis, Kallas said after the coalition agreement was signed. Any crisis can become a fertilizer for the future, she said. The coalition agreement contains many ideas on how to make best use of the crisis for Estonia.
The Riigikogu will have to ensure legal certainty and security for all families that can only be done by passing the implementing provisions of the Registered Partnership Act or through the compromise tabled by 19 MPs last week, Imre Sooäär writes.
The calm after a storm is a self-regulation mechanism in nature and should be in society. It seems the public has been sent false signals that need to be sorted out. The turbulence and pace of events last week is affecting communication. There were times when the situation changed in minutes, not days. That is why we need clarification, to restore the timeline and finally reconcile all sides.
Existing and incoming leaders would do well to keep a cool head instead of gloating and passing judgment. The implementing provisions of the Registered Partnership Act will be passed sooner or later, while no one is in such a hurry to warrant doing it right away, Indrek Kiisler writes.
I wrote a short opinion piece in July in which I proposed canceling the planned marriage referendum in the interests of peace. Naturally, that did not happen.
The last six months have only added to emotions, anger and anxiety in society. That layer is now thicker than the snowdrifts outside. The emotional tapestry is still there and cannot be rolled up any time soon.
On Friday, the Riigikogu board initated proceedings for a bill presented by 19 MPs that would equate a registered partnership contract to a marriage union.
The bill was presented by 10 Center MPs and nine of the 10 opposition Social Democratic Party (SDE) MPs. The bill would subsume registered partnership contracts, implemented from October 9, 2014, and regulated by the Registered Partnership Act into the Family Law Act, rendering the Registered Partnership Act, also known as the cohabitation act, off the statute book.
The bill follows the scrapping of a planned referendum on the definition of marriage, which in turn fell by the wayside largely with the resignation of Jüri Ratas as prime minister earlier in the week, and consequently the exit of the Center-EKRE-Isamaa coalition.