How are you set with candidates — how many are running for chairman?
As far as I know, there is currently one candidate for chairman. By now the candidates are already locked in. All candidates had to be nominated a week before the congress. For the board it’s roughly two people per seat, and for the council there is quite heavy competition again, about four people per seat, so we are well supplied with candidates.
You are the only one running for chairman?
Yes, of course, that’s correct.
The government’s support rating fluctuates around 14–15 percent for the two parties combined. Do you expect this government to last until the next elections in March of next year, or could something still happen?
It seems to me that Prime Minister Kristen Michal’s position is so thin, so weak, that he does not want to make any move that could rock the boat. When there was speculation that some ministers might be changed or there might be reshuffles, that would probably give a bit of air and oxygen to the government. Bring in some fresh faces, and perhaps remove the most unpopular ministers from the picture.
To me it looks like, because Michal’s position is so fragile, he will not make any moves and will continue like this until the elections. The separate question is whether this government will simply hold out. It seems to me that the government will definitely not last as a majority government until the elections; that is, it will lose its parliamentary majority, even officially.
We already have situations where the coalition’s votes in parliament do not come together for certain bills; they just sit on the shelf or are taken off the agenda. But sometime in the fall, after the presidential elections, this situation will probably also officially become such that the two coalition parties’ parliamentary groups are no longer large enough to have a majority together.
You see a minority government as likely, but do you believe the alliance can even function as a minority government? It has also been discussed that presidential elections are approaching, and many members of the governing parties will likely try to secure their futures.
In the Riigikogu, it does not appear from any angle right now that the presidential elections will produce a result. The bar here is very high — 68 votes. Everyone is currently counting on the very strong likelihood that the elections will move to the Electoral College. In the Electoral College, the bar is much lower — you need to get half of its members. Even now there is this kind of tug-of-war over every vote, both among members of parliament and among delegates elected from local governments.
In this process, it is definitely the last moment for those MPs who want to secure a likely landing in the next Riigikogu by switching parties. The calendar simply does not allow this to be postponed much further; by the fall, the top spots on party lists are locked in. If by then you have not contributed to your future political vehicle — the one you want to ride — you will not get the place you are dreaming of. So there will certainly be some movements. How large, how many, or who exactly — there is a lot of speculation about that. In connection with that, I think the current government will lose its parliamentary majority.
It seems to me that everyone has accepted that Michal will remain Prime Minister until the elections. It looks like even the Reform Party itself has accepted this, including all those within the party who are critical of him. They understand that there is no one willing to take on forming a government for a few months, because by doing so they would cut off their ability to start rebuilding the party after the elections. A team change is waiting for the Reform Party after the elections anyway.
So far no presidential candidate has been publicly presented other than your candidate Mart Helme. The Reform Party will certainly want to elect either someone aligned with them or directly linked to the party and gather the votes. Do you see that such a maneuver could slightly boost their support? Right now they are in the mud and no solution is in sight.
That is true. The office of the president is in itself a position that allows a person to be popular. Even the most unpopular presidents, like [Toomas Hendrik] Ilves or [Kersti] Kaljulaid, were still more popular than the government, parliament, or individual parties. This naturally also reflects the political forces behind the presidential candidate — that is, it helps parties and lifts their support.
When [Arnold] Rüütel became president [in 2006], support for his party People’s Union rose and remained higher for a long time than it had been before. There is its own political logic in that.
The liberal camp certainly has not accepted that they will not get their candidate elected. They are currently in a situation where they have not found a candidate they can put forward, and they have not been able to agree among themselves. They are in a situation where they are in the minority in the Electoral College. In the Riigikogu they do indeed have a large majority, but in the Electoral College they are already below half. By the liberal camp I mean the Social Democrats, Eesti 200, and the Reform Party.
EKRE’s support has recently been in the low teens [according to the latest Norstat poll it was 13.7 percent]. There are about nine months left until the elections — what kind of result are you aiming for?
I always remind people that it is worth looking at history. It is worth looking at where party support stood ten or 12 months before the 2023 elections — for example, in the summer of 2022 — or in the summer of 2018. Those numbers were not the same as the final election results. In our party’s case, in 2018 support was much lower than the eventual 2019 election result, and in 2022 support was much higher than the final result. Support can fluctuate by five percentage points quite easily, or even more. Five percent means five or six seats in the Riigikogu. I would not focus on today’s number, but of course you have to look at longer-term trends. Yes, depending on which poll you look at, we have been perhaps a bit below 15 percent.
If you ask what our goal is, then the goal is always to do better than last time. There is a strong desire, however, to achieve a result better than our all-time best result. When we got 19 seats in 2019, then 19 or more seats would be excellent. Last time we got 17 seats. If we get that again, that is also very good. Two or three seats here or there — that is just how life is.
We do not currently have the ambition to go and win the elections, meaning to take first place. If we come second or third, it is important for us to be in a position where we can be in government after the elections. For that, you need to clear a certain minimum and secure a faction of a certain size. How large that is, or what that combination looks like, depends on all the other parties’ results.
If we look at the seats expected based on current polls, which may be around 15 mandates plus or minus, and the internal party logic, then there are already four people with the surname Helme who would certainly like to get into the Riigikogu. In addition to current members of parliament — you yourself, and Mart and Helle-Monika Helme — there is also your spouse Eva Helme. Then there are the Poolamets family, Arvo Aller, Siim Pohlak, Rain Epler. How complicated could drawing up the list become for you?
I also think that when it comes to the list, although competitors occasionally try to say that we do not have depth, then when I look at the current government — whether Eesti 200 or the Reform Party — we clearly have stronger material, stronger people, and much greater depth. In our parliamentary group we have seasoned and experienced people who are serving consecutive terms, and we already have quite a number of people with ministerial experience.
All parties are already working on assembling their lists today. Our party is doing the same. There is certainly internal competition in the party, and for me that competition is welcome. I consider it important that people have ambition, a drive to act, and a hunger to win. That is the invisible, secret ingredient in the dough we are making, or the sausage we are cooking.
It is not inherently bad that we have a certain level of internal rivalry. We also have internal elections, which will take place in the fall. These are always very good in the sense that our candidates have to stand in front of their fellow party members, introduce themselves, and sell themselves to them.
If you can sell yourself to your fellow party members, you can also sell yourself to a broader audience. We have done this several times already, we have experience with it. We have also gone through an internal “clearing the air” conflict within the party, so I think that this time putting together the lists will be considerably easier than in 2023.
You do not see any internal tensions flaring up again in the party? Based on the previous elections, Eva Helme narrowly missed out on entering the Riigikogu due to list placement. What if some party colleague now says: why are you putting your wife ahead of me?
Families are common in Estonian politics; this is not only an EKRE phenomenon. In the Center Party we currently have the Kõlvart family; previously there was the Savisaar family. There were father Aadu Must and daughter Kadri Simson. In the Reform Party we have father and daughter [Siim and Kaja] Kallas. This is due in part to the small size of Estonia, but also to the fact that Estonian voters want a familiar name.
The name Helme is in any case a strong brand in Estonia. Within the party, people are also judged on how hardworking they are. No one has any doubt that whether we are talking about the Poolamets family or the Helme family, they are all hardworking people who do dedicated work, contribute systematically, and very selflessly — in other words, they pursue the broader cause of the party. Party colleagues know how to value that.
This Q&A has been edited for length compared to the original Estonian version.
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