Perse.

(Ma elan Tallinnas)

Where is the rational, level-headed Estonia I fell in love with? There seems to be a large, immoral, corrupt, grey-haired man obscuring the view.

…if there is any legal issues concerning staging a protest within a protest about said protest without protestors involved in said protest being aware what they are protesting about?

Ok, so perhaps we’re starting a little too deep there. Where I live (Estonia), there is a political party called Keskerakond (Effectively translates as ‘Centre Party’). Now, they’re a little bit corrupt. I know what you’re thinking. Every party is a little bit corrupt, and what’s a little corruption here and there? Well, it’s quite a lot actually. I won’t go in to the details of why, or how, they are corrupt, just because of the sheer volume of issues concerned here. I will just say that it’s fairly obvious that they are VERY corrupt. Also they attempt to really manipulate the electorate with blatant smear campaigns that are being rather economical with the truth.

The whole point is, recently there was a… ‘Gathering’ …of centre party supporters to… well, I don’t actually know what the official reason they were there was exactly. Of course, it’s a free country, they can gather where they want, and so they should be allowed to do so. Except, conveniently they were right outside parliament. And, conveniently they were protesting. Now all this is fine. I’m a total advocate of freedom of speech and all that, but they were protesting with banners (ironically written in Estonian I believe) that had the Keskerakond logo on them.

Not exactly a normal group of people protesting about the government.

Anyhow, it was obviously propaganda, and no one really fell for it anyway, since there was a news poll later that evening and something like (I can’t remember exactly and could be WILDLY wrong. If so I apologise. But to google this and find the actual figures is actually quite a lot of a bother.) 82% of people watching that news at that moment in time thought that the whole thing was a propaganda stunt.

Now that’s rather worrying, since I wonder exactly what the other 18% thought it was. Anyhow, I was wondering. Since a large base of Keskerakonds support are the Russian speaking minority who don’t speak Estonian, how easy (although also morally wrong, and I in no way advocate doing this) would it be to replace the signs they are protesting with (probably saying phrases such as ‘Reformierakond (the party currently in power) is stealing nursery school children’s money’, which holds about as much water as McDonald’s’ ‘100% beef’ thing.) with phrases such as ‘If you want to elect a totalitarian cretin who’s corrupt to the bone, vote Keskerakond!’. As long as you put the green ‘K’ logo at the bottom then no one would be any the wiser. One could just innocently wonder among the protestors, handing out the banners, then disappear before anyone get’s a clue as to what is going on. (Baring in mind, all the above statements are totally my opinion, and no matter how true they are, may not be correct.)

Of course there are moral issues here, and it’s not really funny to abuse the minority (although, they should learn the language. If they did learn the language, then the stunt wouldn’t even be feasible. But they don’t, mostly, so it is totally feasible*). But, what would be funny would be to smear a party that does so desperately and pitifully rely on the public image. It would really cause a downfall in their popularity. I mean, with 4 huge Keskerakond banners at every crossroad with their sollum looking faces frowning down upon you with their names up in massive white print next to them (50% of these names aren’t exactly Estonian), and a cringe worthy, truth bending slogan on every bin, it does rather remind one of 1984. It’d be like handing out banners during the climax of Hate Week saying ‘Big Brother’s moustache isn’t real’. Of course, totally harmless fun, but it’d do serious damage to the long term image of ‘The Party’ (or Keskerakond. They seem very similar, except jolly old Edgar doesn’t have a moustache, although if he did i’m sure it wouldn’t be real either). And thankfully one can get away with such a thing in this society without ‘dissapearing’.

Anyhow, as stated before, I do not in any way endorse such behaviour.

However, one can still hope…

*By they, I mean the average Russian Keskerakond supporter, because Keskerakond really appeal to the Russians and also promise greater ties with DUMA. There are a lot of Russians in Estonia that make a real, and admirable, effort to learn the language, and I strongly applaud them, but to be living in a country and to not make an effort to learn the language is both selfish and foolish in my honest opinion.

Pronkssõduriaegne abipolitseinike kampaania kestab edasi – nüüdseks on korrakaitse- ja uurivorganitega liitunud ka SLÕhtuleht, kes on lõdva randmega paljastanud Võrumaa kartulibandiidid…

Savisaar jagab kartuleid