TALLINN: Estonia's opposition liberal Reform party was on course to win Sunday's general election, taking a strong lead over centre-left Prime Minister Juri Ratas's party which only narrowly outpaced 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 30.3 percent of the vote, well ahead of Ratas's Centre party on 20.9 percent, with the far-right EKRE more than doubling its previous election score at 17.5 percent, according to results from 83 percent of polling stations, Estonia's official state elections website said.
Bread-and-butter issues like taxation and public spending dominated the lacklustre campaign, along with tensions over Russian-language education for Estonia's sizeable Russian minority and the rural-urban divide.
The far-right EKRE captured support promising to slash income and excise taxes and pushing anti-immigration rhetoric.
With five parties likely to enter the 101-seat parliament, the splintered outcome could make for tricky coalition building.
- Tax breaks, wage hikes -
Traditional rivals, Centre and Reform have alternated in government and even governed together over the nearly three decades since Estonia broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union.
Both strongly support Estonia's EU and NATO membership and have favoured austerity to keep spending in check, giving the country the eurozone's lowest debt-to-GDP ratio.
Two other parties in the race which currently govern with Ratas, the Social Democrats and Isamaa, respectively took 10.2 percent and 11.7 percent of the vote, partial results showed. Both could team up with either Centre or Reform.
Centre has vowed to hike pensions by 8.4 percent and to replace Estonia's 20 percent flat income tax and 21 percent corporate tax with a progressive system to boost state revenue.
Nixing a progressive tax, business-friendly Reform instead wants to raise the tax-free monthly minimum exemption and lower unemployment insurance premiums to aid job creation.
Joblessness hovers at just under five percent while economic growth is expected to slow to 2.7 percent this year, from 3.9 percent in 2018.
Alexander, a Russian-speaking factory worker who also did not give his full name, wants pension and salary hikes.
"It's impossible to survive with the minimum wage," he told AFP in Tallinn, referring to Estonia's 540 euro ($615) monthly minimum.
For Lauri, an advertising specialist who also declined to reveal his family name and voter preference, the isolationist and conservative social and foreign policy proposed by parties like the EKRE is cause for concern.
- Estxit -
While it won just seven seats in the 2015 election, the EKRE appears set to come in a close third behind the mainstream parties.
Staunchly eurosceptic, it called for an "Estxit" referendum on Estonia's EU membership, although the move would be doomed to fail in the overwhelmingly pro-EU country.
The party's deep suspicion of Moscow translates into strong support for NATO membership and the multinational battalion the alliance installed in Estonia in 2017 as a tripwire against possible Russian adventurism.
Tonis Saarts, a Tallinn University political scientist, describes the EKRE's position on liberal democracy, including civic and human rights, rule of law and the separation of powers, as "very ambiguous" and draws comparisons to similar parties that have gained support across Europe in recent years.
The party's surging popularity is largely rooted in the misgivings of rural Estonians who feel left behind after years of austerity under Centre and Reform.
"These people see few economic prospects and feel the mainstream parties don't care much about their problems," Saarts told AFP.
- Russian minority -
The Centre party has long been favoured by the Russian minority, comprising around a quarter of the Baltic state's population of 1.3 million.
To avoid losing voters suspicious of Russia, Ratas insists that a 2004 cooperation deal with Vladimir Putin's United Russia party is "frozen". But out of fear of losing the Russian vote, he has refused to rip it up.
The minority is counting on Centre to save the existing education system comprising Estonian and Russian-language schools set up in Soviet times, while Reform and EKRE want to scrap Russian-language teaching.
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