FROM THE MAIL OFFICE ⟩ Kõlvart: I don’t need anyone to show me loyalty

Mihhail Kõlvart: “I don’t need anyone to show me loyalty”

24 March 2023, 16:09

Tallinn City Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart has announced his candidacy for the leadership of the Estonian Conservative Party (Keskerakonna). We will discuss with Kõlvart in Postimehe’s live report what changes should be made within the party. Why did you decide to nominate yourself for party leadership just now?

After the elections, is the situation so bad that Jüri Ratas can no longer make mistakes? Following the elections, there was a feeling both within and outside the party regarding what would happen next. I, too, had a question as to whether we were truly in order and whether anything needed to change.

I did feel, however, that people were waiting for a message, but the week passed and no message could be delivered. In my opinion, it is very important for the party now to analyze the situation and honestly say what will happen next. Therefore, I proposed convening a congress, which is the place where party members meet to decide what to do.

I also gave a clear message that I am ready to nominate myself for party leadership and take responsibility. This is not a matter of personal ambitions, because I have been asked before whether it was a good time to aspire to party leadership. If I were driven by personal ambitions, I would have nominated myself several years ago.

But now it is a critical moment when we must think about the future of the party. What should be done differently within the party? In order for us to move forward, we must first look within the party to see if we are strong enough to take on greater responsibility in the future, namely to be in government.

I think that if we don’t resolve these issues, we don’t have the right to say that we are the organization that can be consulted for coalition negotiations. This means that we need to engage more with rural areas, we need to strengthen the structure and we need to engage more with both internal and external communication. Several of your party colleagues have also said that if someone becomes the party leader, the Conservative Party will become a municipal party focused on Tallinn.

There are currently two paradigms being promoted within the party – one is that we have a Russian wing and an Estonian wing. I am even embarrassed to quote this, but I will nevertheless. It is claimed that our Estonian wing is somehow weak, so the Russian wing takes over power – but this is nonsense.

When people talk about the need for change within the party, their opinion does not depend on their nationality. Certainly, those people who want change and support the congress, perhaps, do not depend on their nationality. There is no vision among them that we must now choose based on nationality.

If such a topic is being pushed from the outside, I understand this, because it has been done before, but if we start spreading such messages within the party, it is sad. If we talk about a different idea, that Kõlvart and comes municipal party, this idea even pleased me. Not in the sense that it is a Tallinn party, but rather that we are a party focused on local government.

Municipal police and local governments should be our biggest priority. Our organization should also be strong in the counties, because if we don’t have a strong organization on site in rural areas, we don’t have the Conservative Party. What opportunities do you see to get your voters back in Ida-Virumaa?

This is not the only problem. We really lost voters there because our support was once at its peak, but at the same time, it is the only region where the Conservative Party won elections. Therefore, it cannot be said that we are now only dealing with Ida-Virumaa.

We have lost votes in every region, and this process began as early as 2017. We did win the 2021 local elections, but if you look at the number of votes, support has continued to decline. We have lost votes in every region, and this process began as early as 2017.

We won the 2021 local elections, but if you look at the number of votes, support has continued to decline. Already in 2021, it was clear that the party brand did not support candidates. Our votes began to disappear in every region, and our local organizations’ resources began to disappear as well.

So we cannot say that the priority is to win back Ida-Virumaa, but we must say that we have problems in every region. We need to get voters and our people back. Can I truly understand that the entire time Jüri Ratas has been the chairman of the party has been anything but successful?

No, that’s not right. Jüri came to the position of party chairman at a difficult time. I sincerely hope that there will not be any emotional or tense battles this time.

What happened in 2016 was very tense, Jüri had many challenges at that time and he took on a huge burden. So if we didn’t manage to do anything, then the responsibility is on all of us, but the responsibility is also on the party chairman. If all the members of the board admit mistakes, then the party chairman must also do so.

Therefore, Jüri Ratas should admit that the party has made mistakes? I think that party members have been waiting for more concrete messages since the election period. I do not claim that if you say you will take responsibility, you must immediately say you will leave.

But you should also formulate that responsibility, saying that the decisions we made led us to where we are now and that we should think together about how to move forward. But we did not receive such messages. The processes taking place within the party before the congress do not mean that we will punish anyone or remove anyone or that this is about resolving personal relationships or ambitions between two people.

This approach should be forgotten. We are talking about the future of the party. Jüri Ratas is not actually announcing his candidacy, but several well-known people from the party have already publicly announced that they are Jüri Ratas’ men or that they support Jüri Ratas.

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