The Race is On!

Back to school. The president giving a lecture on citizenship in Nõmme Gymnasium
Andres Putting, DelfiPressifoto

The president of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves announced today that the elections for the places in European Parliament will be held here in Estonia on the 7th of June. He addressed the nation with a short speech on the national TV.

This time the elections are held a bit differently as voters can only choose from the lists that parties have formed. This means that some parties have attached attractive "vote catchers" to their lists whose job will only be to bait enough votes so that the party will win a seat in the parliament and can send a completely different candidate to Brussels. This fact was also underlined as an important aspect of the elections by the presidents as he stressed the importance of ethics and called voters to remain critical to those parties campaigns where only inner politics of our republic are in focus.

Knowledge, diligence and co operation where the three qualities listed by the president that a future candidate to the EU parliament should have. So let's not forget these recommendations as we cast our votes on the 7th of June.

On another note I'm a bit disappointed that our presidents Youtube channel has not been updated lately with fresh material. I can already think of two important clips that should definitely be there - the speech held to the nation on the Independence Day and today's announcement.