Estonia’s Reform Party starts coalition government talks

By JARI TANNER
Associated Press

HELSINKI (AP) — Estonia’s center-right Reform Party has started talks with two smaller parties about forming a new liberal-minded coalition government. The party of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas won the Baltic nation’s general election with 31.2% of the vote. On Wednesday, Kallas hosted a meeting of delegates from the Reform Party, the centrist Estonia 200 party and the left-leaning Social Democratic Party. The Reform Party was the senior partner in the outgoing three-party government. Although it won nearly twice as many votes Sunday as the election’s runner-up, the far-right populist ERKE party, Kallas needs junior partners to form a Cabinet that can govern with a comfortable majority for the next four years.