kerkko.fi

 

Estonians to vote by smartphone

Estonia is investing in technology that will allow people to vote in elections using their mobile phones. Mobile identification has been used in Estonia for all of the same services as passports except voting since 2007. As of 2011, however, Estonians can vote in national elections using their computers or smartphones with internet access. Police and Border Guard will assign electronic signatures needed to vote through an online application form.

http://news.err.ee/f3dd5939-dbed-462c-8627-d56272317872

Filed under: Democracy Elections Estonia Mobile Technology eGovernment
 

Estonia's Russian speakers alienated from state

Estonia's Russian-speaking population is growing increasingly alienated from the Estonian state as a political institution. A fresh study by Tallinn University shows that 31% of Russian speakers do not trust the police, while 60% of Estonian speakers do. Trust in the courts stands at 29% among Russian speakers and at 40% among Estonian speakers. Unsurprisingly, trust in the government and the parliament is the lowest: only 9% of Russian speakers and 32% of Estonian speakers trust the government, while 7% of Russian speakers and 18% of Estonian speakers trust the parliament.

At the same time, willingness to apply for Estonian citizenship has fallen drastically among the country's non-citizen population, who are mostly Russian speakers. In 2005, as many as 74% of non-citizens wanted to obtain Estonian citizenship, whereas in 2010, the figure was just 33%. In 2005, only 7% of non-citizens said they did not want to be citizens of any state, while in 2010, the figure was as high as 40%. Estonia has one of the highest proportions of non-citizen residents in the European Union, with 7.5% of the country's total population having no citizenship whatsoever.

http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/education/?doc=31621

Filed under: Estonia Integration Minority Study
 

Sofi Oksanen's Stalinist Mythology
The immense success of Sofi Oksanen's novel "Purge" astonishes me. The book falls into the same category as the Stalinist books of my childhood, only the heroes and anti-heroes have changed their roles. My objection to the book is that it pretends to be a realistic story about life in Soviet Estonia in the second half of the 20th century, and seems to have been accepted as such in Europe and America.

Sofi Oksanen, who has no direct experience of the time and events she describes, has taken parts of our life, sewing them together according to some age-old rules of ideological-mythological literature, and is now selling it in the West. She is selling something that pretends to be our life, but is not. I do not want anybody to take my life away from me and sell an adulterated version of it to unknowing people abroad.

http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/2010/08/sofi-oksanen-and-stalin-award.html
Filed under: Estonia History Literature Sofi Oksanen Soviet
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