History
The Estonian Reform Party was founded on 18 November 1994, joining together the Reform Party — a then-recent splinter from the National Coalition Party Pro Patria — and the Estonian Liberal Democratic Party. The new party, which had 710 members at its foundation, was led by Siim Kallas, who had been President of the Bank of Estonia and uninvolved in politics. Kallas was untainted by association with Mart Laar's government, but was widely seen as a proficient central bank governor, having overseen the successful introduction of the Estonian kroon. The party formed ties with the Free Democratic Party of Germany, the Liberal People's Party of Sweden, Finland's Swedish People's Party, and Latvia's Latvian Way.
In the party's first parliamentary election, in March 1995, it won 19 seats: catapulting it into second place, behind the Coalition Party. Tiit Vähi tried to negotiate a coalition with the Reform Party, but the talks broke down over economic policy, with the Reform Party opposing agricultural subsidies and supporting the maintenance of Estonia's flat-rate income tax, While the Coalition Party formed a new government with the Centre Party at first, a taping scandal involving Centre Party leader Edgar Savisaar led to the Reform Party replacing the Centre Party in the coalition in November 1995. Kallas was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs, with five other Reform Party members serving in the cabinet. The Reform Party left the government in November 1996 after the Coalition Party signed a cooperation agreement with the Centre Party without consulting them.
At the 1999 election, the Reform Party dropped one seat to 18, finishing third behind the Centre Party and the conservative Pro Patria Union. The ER formed a centre-right coalition with the Pro Patria Union and the Moderates, with Mart Laar as Prime Minister and Siim Kallas as Minister of Finance, and with Toomas Savi returned as Speaker. Although the coalition was focused on EU and NATO accession, the Reform Party successfully delivered its manifesto pledge to abolish corporate tax: one of its most notable achievements. After the October 1999 local elections, the three parties replicated their alliance in Tallinn.
The party served in government again from March 1999 to December 2001 in a tripartite government with Pro Patria Union and People's Party Moderates, from January 2002 to March 2003 with the Estonian Centre Party, from March 2003 to March 2005 with Res Publica and People's Union, from March 2005 to March 2007 with the Centre Party and People's Union, from March 2007 to May 2009 with Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica and the Social Democratic Party. Since May 2009 the Reform Party are in a minority government with Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica.
Ansip has been prime minister of Estonia since April, 2005, and several other cabinet members, including Urmas Paet, are members of the party.
After the 2007 parliamentary election holds 31 out of 101 seats in the Riigikogu, after receiving 153,040 votes (27.8% of the total), an increase of +10.1%, resulting in a net gain of 12 seats.
Read more about this topic: Estonian Reform Party
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)