Election day has finally arrived and the voters are out in their masses to elect the new Riigikogu and, ultimately, the next government.
I mentioned a few of the election promises in an earlier posting but just to refresh the memory the main parties have all put the kroon-in-the-pocket at the top of the agenda - Reform will lower taxes to give the average Joe 4% more of his salary whilst the Centrists have discovered the fabled money tree and will be harvesting its crop voraciously! Indeed Reform envisage their policies entrenching Estonia as one of the five richest nations in the EU by 2015 - I think that they'll have to ask the Centrists for the whereabouts of that money tree!
But the big boys have singularly failed to address three of the most pressing issues in Estonian society.
1. Estonia has the highest prevalence of HIV in the EU at 1.3% of the population,
2. Estonia has the largest per capita prison population in the EU at 333/100,000,
3. Estonia has the lowest life expectancy in the EU at just over 65 which is more than 10 years below the EU average.
These are all quite shocking statistics and the politicians have simply brushed these matters under the carpet. But equally distasteful has been the willingness of the Estonian media to be complicit in this - the newspapers and TV love a good scandal as regards to who has been shagging who or who has said what about the next person's wife but any issue that might tarnish the shiny, sparkly image of the lovely Estonian Fatherland is briskly consigned to File 13.
It is a crying shame that the real issues are not being dealt with in the wider public spectrum but reality is a bit too offensive to the average Tallinner so best just consider which party is going to make them richer while driving to the polling station with a mobile phone jammed to the ear and ignoring every traffic law ever written.
Anyway it doesn't really matter if the politicians bankrupt the state - the average person is certainly going to die before they ever reach pensionable age!
I mentioned a few of the election promises in an earlier posting but just to refresh the memory the main parties have all put the kroon-in-the-pocket at the top of the agenda - Reform will lower taxes to give the average Joe 4% more of his salary whilst the Centrists have discovered the fabled money tree and will be harvesting its crop voraciously! Indeed Reform envisage their policies entrenching Estonia as one of the five richest nations in the EU by 2015 - I think that they'll have to ask the Centrists for the whereabouts of that money tree!
But the big boys have singularly failed to address three of the most pressing issues in Estonian society.
1. Estonia has the highest prevalence of HIV in the EU at 1.3% of the population,
2. Estonia has the largest per capita prison population in the EU at 333/100,000,
3. Estonia has the lowest life expectancy in the EU at just over 65 which is more than 10 years below the EU average.
These are all quite shocking statistics and the politicians have simply brushed these matters under the carpet. But equally distasteful has been the willingness of the Estonian media to be complicit in this - the newspapers and TV love a good scandal as regards to who has been shagging who or who has said what about the next person's wife but any issue that might tarnish the shiny, sparkly image of the lovely Estonian Fatherland is briskly consigned to File 13.
It is a crying shame that the real issues are not being dealt with in the wider public spectrum but reality is a bit too offensive to the average Tallinner so best just consider which party is going to make them richer while driving to the polling station with a mobile phone jammed to the ear and ignoring every traffic law ever written.
Anyway it doesn't really matter if the politicians bankrupt the state - the average person is certainly going to die before they ever reach pensionable age!
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