Estonian Premier Moves to Avert Cabinet Crisis Over Police Chief

(Bloomberg) -- Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas moved to keep his coalition government intact after it was pushed to the brink of collapse by a failed attempt of the nationalist junior partner to oust the country’s police chief Elmar Vaher.

“The situation has calmed after the first overly emotional and rushed moves,” Ratas said on his Facebook page late on Friday following a meeting with EKRE party leaders, father and son Mart and Martin Helme. Government cooperation “will only be possible” if the Helmes, who head the interior and finance ministries respectively, won’t again attempt moves that aren’t coordinated with the premier and the government, he said.

In the strongest test yet for Ratas’s three-month-old coalition, an attempt by the Helmes to force the police chief to quit over a “loss of trust” without the knowledge and the necessary agreement of the rest of the Cabinet triggered a sharp rebuke from the prime minister on Thursday. The situation is “difficult” but “not a crisis,” Ratas, in power since 2016, told public broadcaster ERR on Friday before meeting the Helmes.

Mart Helme has said Vaher misled the public by saying he’s been instructed to cut police jobs as part of planned public-sector savings. Vaher has also objected to plans of creating a new domestic security force to deal with internal crises, according to Helme.

While Ratas successfully navigated a government crisis late last year, the 41-year-old prime minister faces increasing public criticism after he snubbed the election-winning Reform Party following a March ballot and reneged on pledges to avoid ruling with the anti-immigrant and euroskeptic EKRE. Media reports this month have indicated growing unease in Ratas’s Center Party that has lost support as the premier denounces statements by EKRE officials almost weekly.

Support for his Center Party has declined to 18% in latest polls, with Reform at a record 39%. Reform and opposition Social Democrats have urged Ratas to dismiss both Mart and Martin Helme or quit himself.

Ratas must perform a delicate balancing act because his Center Party relies on support from Estonia’s Russian speakers, who make up about a quarter of Estonia’s 1.3 million population and have increasingly opted for other parties over Center’s cooperation with the nationalists, according to opinion surveys.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ott Ummelas in Tallinn at oummelas@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Rene Vollgraaff, Guy Collins

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