Jealous Ansip would be better off working with Laar

Estonia’s new government may be easily the least bad in eastern Europe. But that’s a modest achievement, a bit like conquering Big Egg Mountain, at all of 318 metres, (1,043 ft) above sea level, the country’s highest peak.

The real question is which government is the worst? The choice is: incompetent and obsessive in Poland; weak in the Czech Republic; disintegrating in Romania, various mixtures of sleazy, thuggish and do-nothing elsewhere. Add the alarming role played by Kremlin slush money, and the picture is pretty bleak.

By that standard, even the outgoing Estonian government was adequate. It was stable and reasonably efficient, thanks to the canniness of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip. The economy rocketed ahead. But stability came at the cost of action. Estonia’s famed innovative edge was blunted. Corruption started creeping up, especially in some ministries and municipalities controlled by his coalition partners. On vital issues such as education and e-government, reform largely stalled.

Ansip’s new coalition should be a boost, not a brake. The main partner is a conservative grouping led by the visionary former prime minister Mart Laar. Another is the social democrat party, to which Toomas Hendrick Ilves, the country’s formidable president, used to belong.

The coalition talks since last month’s election proved surprisingly difficult, mainly because Ansip refused to have Laar as foreign minister, claiming that he was too strong-willed.

The truth is that Ansip was jealous. Laar, whose lightning reform programme of 1992 brought free trade, sound money, privatisation and the flat tax in less than two years, ranks with Poland’s Leszek Balcerowicz in the pantheon of post-communist politicians. Ansip is a likeable fellow with a pleasantly sardonic turn of phrase. He was a good mayor of Tartu, Estonia’s second city and he is still an impressive athlete. But it is not quite the same thing.

Sadly, Ansip did not follow Sweden’s example, where the inexperienced Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt gutsily appointed his vastly better-known predecessor Carl Bildt as foreign minister. That was good for Sweden and made Reinfeldt look big. Ansip’s stance makes him look small. Laar remains in parliament and as party leader. His time -?in Tallinn, or perhaps in Brussels - will come again.

Still, the new coalition, uniquely in the post-communist world, has a parliamentary majority, clean and effective ministers, and a largely sensible programme. Ansip has no excuse now: he should aim not just to have the best government in eastern Europe, but on the whole continent.

It faces some big tests. One is to clean up the mess left in the ministries (notably interior and environment) run by the outgoing coalition parties. Tallinn’s municipal finances and management would repay rigorous scrutiny. Letting Estonia’s boom cool safely will be tricky too, especially when promised tax cuts will stimulate the red-hot economy further.

The government’s most immediate challenge, though, will be defusing the row, started by Ansip in the run-up to last month’s election, over Tallinn’s Soviet-era war memorial. This - supposedly - has to be moved because it has become a focus of Russian demonstrations against Estonia, and also inflames Estonian extremists. Predictably, Russia portrayed the move as pure vindictiveness, a sign of Estonian resurgent Nazi sympathies and ingratitude towards Soviet sacrifices. Bungled diplomacy left Estonia’s allies surprised, baffled - and silent.

The plan is not to tear down the memorial, but to move it, and any bodies on the site, to the more suitable surroundings of a war cemetery. Portrayed like that, it may be more palatable. But it will still be a hard sell: just the sort of challenge Laar would have relished.

• The writer is central and eastern Europe correspondent of The Economist.

Estonia’s new government may be easily the least bad in eastern Europe. But that’s a modest achievement, a bit like conquering Big Egg Mountain, at all of 318 metres, (1,043 ft) above sea level, the country’s highest peak.