ETV's Sunday night current affairs programme Aeg Luubis has reported on the results of a sociological survey asking respondents which politicians, if any, they would trust enough to buy a used car from.The short answer is that most people wouldn't trust any of them. The clear favourite among Russian-speaking Estonians was Centre Party leader Edgar Savisaar (surprise!), while least favoured of all recipients was former People's Union leader and Minister of the Environment Villu Reiljan - people presumably worried that if they bought something from him it would become embroiled in a dodgy swap scandal. Most trustworthy of the bunch overall was deemed to be president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, although the same number who said they would buy an old jalopy from him also said they didn't know how to respond to the question.
And arguably rightly so: it's a daft one and entirely moot. Sociologists claim that the results of the survey reveal interesting things about the mindset of people towards politicians these days: for example, that support for certain parties may be high, but not for their leaders (prime minister Andrus Ansip being a prime example); and that generally the trend is to favour politic[ian]s that follow a social-democratic line. But since this isn't really reflected in how people vote - Ansip received the greatest number of single votes in electoral history at the last parliamentary elections, while the Social Democrats failed to make much of a mark at all (sadly) - I fail to see the relevance myself.
The only substantive point the survey makes is that Russian speakers will support Edgar Savisaar and Keskerakond whatever it is that's being peddled, and we knew that already.
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