Kristina Ojuland Booted Out Of Reformierakond

I wouldn't normally blog about politics, particularly not Estonian politics although I try to keep tabs on what's going on.

The latest development has been the sacking of Kristina Ojuland, high flyer in the classical liberal Refomierakond (R-kond) or Reform Party here in Estonia.

The party forms the greater part of the coalition government and its leader Andrus Ansip has been prime minister of Estonia since 2005.

Ansip has already announced he will not be seeking reelection as party leader and so it would be sage to assume as prime minister either, but the party has been riven with scandal and back biting for the past year at least.

The principal incident was the sacking of former MP Silver Meikar for apparently blowing the whistle on illegal donations to the party (and we're not talking about mega bucks here) a scandal which also implicated Kristen Michal, former Justice Minister and something of the coming man within the party.

Whatever really happened, Meikar lost the engagement and was effectively branded a liar by the prime minister himself.

In this latest development Ms Ojuland, platinum-blonde representative of Estonia at the European parliament, former foreign minister and a long-serving member of R-kond was accused of vote rigging, concerning the casting of an e-vote from an elderly voter who in fact had no access to the necessary technology that would have enabled them to do so.

The election in question was an internal party affair rather than a national or regional one.

In a brief tit-for-tat, Ojuland pointed the finger at corruption within the party as a whole and gave her own press conference just yesterday before finally being shown the door.

I personally don't quite know who to believe, Ms Ojuland was no stranger to controversy and her tenure as foreign minister was tainted by the disappearance of some documents that were her responsibility. On the other hand, Ansip's style has been, at least since I've been in Estonia since 2009, notably authoritarian and uncompromising. John Major he is not.

Well, I said I wouldn't usually write on such issues so I´ll cut it short there, readers with Estonian might want to see this article, or in Finnish, or, er, in English.