Estonian center-right PM set to form new coalition

TALLINN (Reuters) - Center-right Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip was set for a wafer-thin election victory on Sunday, allowing him to re-form the current right-left coalition or embrace more like-minded conservative nationalists.

Ansip favors further reductions in the country's flat rate of income tax and has said he will not put the brakes on the economy to allow Estonia a faster adoption of the euro, which he has said could happen in 2010 at the earliest.

Ansip and other parties wooed voters by vowing to cut taxes or boost wages in a nation which is still one of the poorest in the European Union, but where the economy grew by more than 11 percent in the past year and economist say could overheat.

With votes in from 644 of the 657 polling stations, Ansip's Reform Party was heading for 31 seats in the 101-seat parliament, just two more than current coalition partner, the leftist Center Party.

But the main nationalist party Pro Patria-Res Publica made a stronger than expected showing in third place with 19 seats.

The Baltic state became the first country in the world to allow Internet voting in a parliamentary election. More than 30,000 people took part in the Internet poll, which took place last week. Overall turnout rose to 61 percent from 58 percent in the last election in 2003.

A source of tension has been Estonia's 300,000 Russian-speakers. Moscow says the Baltic state has discriminated against them since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. About 100,000 of them can vote in the election. Others are either citizens of Russia or so-called non-citizens, without the right to vote in national parliamentary elections.

Reuters