Man of the People

A startling, in-depth piece of investigative journalism by those tabloid trashbags at SL Õhtuleht has revealed that the Estonian president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, is up to his eyeballs in debt - having run up millions of kroons in car, home and property loans from a variety of banks and credit institutions. Placing him in pretty much the same boat as every other upper-middle class Estonian.

My advice to him would be: make use of SMS loans while you can. There have been rumblings - from those who clearly don't need them - that such 'dial-a-dollar' schemes are subversive and wrong, but come on, think of the convenience! Next time the president is at Säästumarket and realises his almost 85,000 EEK monthly salary won't be enough to cover his value pack of cheesy wieners, all he need do is make a quick call and voila! They'll be exploding in the fire quicker than you can say "he'll be paying them off for months to come at a ridiculously exhorbitant rate of interest".

I stand corrected

Posted by Oliver on June 27, 2007 at 11:04 AM

You were missing the following labels: self-criticism/irony/ridiculing, Estonian sarcasm etc.
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Irony indeed. How could I ever have thought that there would be any self-satisfied liberals in Estonia? ;-)

Of course, what makes Mart Raukas' article so effective is the ring of truth it has. For the benefit of those reading this who had to duck the flying irony, let me elaborate. In point form.

*Estonians have gone borrowing mad. The new sense of financial security that has blanketed the country has led to a boom in lending, primarily for housing, but this is also a country where you see nightly advertisements for instantaneous SMS loans should you overspend on your grocery shopping. Something's got to give. Inevitably, it will.

*Estonia's prime minister, Andrus Ansip (pictured), recently justified only marginally increasing excise on beer - whilst upping it significantly on things like petrol - by saying "You can't play with the price of beer. How long do you think a government that raises the price of beer will remain in power?" Nice to see we have forward-thinking leaders in this country with the future of their nation at heart.

*Estonia has some of the worst rates of gambling addiction in Europe. Have you ever seen the episode of Little Britain where Tom Baker reveals that there are 5 pubs per head of population in the UK? It's a bit like that here with casinos. One of Andrus Ansip's catchphrases when pressed on such matters is "Don't ask me, I'm just the Prime Minister".

*Granted, the gender equality issue is more debatable. In my view it's never really seemed to be much of a thing here: whoever is right for the job gets the job. And since virtually everyone in Estonia has exactly the same schooling and a degree in Business Management, what basis for discrimination can there possibly be?

*Estonia has certainly taken the whole 'stand up and be counted' thing to heart, packing troops off to foreign warzones and providing advisers to presidents in countries which haven't quite come as far in recent years. Smacks a big of sibling rivalry though, vying for the grown-ups' attention, with a poor cousin complex thrown in, and a big boys/playground mentality. Which is perhaps an uncharitable way of viewing it, but there you go.

Then there is the whole 'better than the neighbours' thing at the heart of the article... but more on that next time.