Estonia's pro-West party wins election focused on neighboring Russia

Early Monday, Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas, 35, declared victory for his pro-Western Reform Party in Sunday's elections. With all votes counted, the Reform Party got 28 percent of the vote and 30 seats, beating the ethnic-Russian-favored opposition Center Party by five seats. In all, though, the ruling center-right coalition lost seven seats, giving it a 45-seat plurality in the 101-seat legislature.

A quarter of Estonia's population is ethnic Russian, and security concerns about an expansionist Moscow loomed large in the election. But all major political parties favor increased defense spending and continued membership in NATO. The main economic issue, The Associated Press reports, concerned whether to transform Estonia's 20 percent flat tax to a progressive tax, an idea opposed by the Reform Party and favored by the Center Party and the Social Democrats, a minority party in the governing coalition.

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