Estonian Parliament endorses removal of statue of Soviet soldier
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The Estonian Parliament approved by a narrow margin a bill on Thursday, according to which a controversial statue of a Soviet soldier should be removed. The motion was passed in its third reading by split vote 46-44.
According to the motion, the Estonian government has a month to remove the statue from its present location in Tallinn's Tõnismägi.
The Parliament's decision, however, does not guarantee the removal of the controversial monument. The Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves announced already on Thursday that he would not sign the bill into law, as he feels that it violates the country's constitution. According to Ilves, the members of Parliament were well aware of this fact.
"Some of the politicians are motivated by hopes of using the bronze statue to get publicity, rather than by an earnest desire to find a functional solution", Ilves lashed out in his Thursday statement.
On Monday, the Estonian Parliament will start its last working week before the March 4th general election. Ilves will send the motion back to Parliament, which means the fate of the statue is likely to be passed on to the next parliamentary line-up.
Neighbouring Russia, where the subject of removing the statue has also caused a stir, waited for President Ilves's decision as well as for Estonia's upcoming Parliamentary election with a great deal of interest. "Let me emphasise that the Estonian President sees the motion as unconstitutional", chairman Konstantin Kossachov of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian Duma commented to the Russian news agency Interfax on Thursday.
To former Communists and Russians living in Estonia, the statue is regarded as a kind of rallying point. To many Estonians, however, the 1947 monument to the "Soviet Liberators" is seen much more in terms of a memorial to the era of occupation and purges between 1940 and 1991, when Estonia regained its independence.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 16.2.2007 - TODAY |
 Estonian Parliament endorses removal of statue of Soviet soldier
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