by Marcus Kolga
After years spent struggling to escape the stigma attached to being a former hostage of the Soviet State, Estonia has rightfully earned its status as a global leader in digital governance and innovation. Thanks to early leaders like Prime Minister Mart Laar, who enacted ambitious yet painful early reforms in the nation’s post-Soviet era, Estonia shed as much of their Soviet baggage as possible in order to hasten the nation’s re-entry into Europe and the Western world.
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, re-calibrated Estonia’s dramatic forward trajectory by ambitiously tilting it upwards, with his now famous Tiger Leap initiative – which was to make Estonia a global tech leader.
Estonia’s paperless government and electronic system of governance – from i-voting to the administration of personal health records, are an international model of success. Its innovative e-residency program, allowing foreigners to become virtual residents, open bank accounts and start-up companies, is the first of its kind in the world and has attracted 73,000 people from 170+ countries who have established over 14,000 new companies in Estonia over the past few years.
However, in March 2019, the e-Estonia project faced a setback, when a marginal neo-fascist political party, was unexpectedly thrust into the national spotlight by current PM Juri Ratas. His populist Center Party, having come in second in the general election, eschewed a coalition with the winning centrist Reform Party. Determined to remain in power, Ratas entered into a coalition with the far-right Estonian Conservative Peoples’ Party (EKRE) – which, in addition to sharing Putin’s homophobic and xenophobic positions, also has members who believe Adolf Hitler “did some positive things.....