Thread by @koutchoukalimar, I know there's been a lot going on in the world recently, [...]

I know there's been a lot going on in the world recently, but I'd like to spend some time now talking about the insanity surrounding Estonia's upcoming (?) referendum.

The process so far has been an absolute legal mess and it doesn't seem to be close to ending soon, either.

When the current right-wing ruling coalition was formed, one of the national conservative EKRE party's conditions was to have a referendum on whether or not marriage should be defined in the Estonian constitution as "the continued union between a man and a woman".

After the Estonian government nearly collapsed in November, due to (now ex-)interior minister Mart Helme's remarks, which cast doubt on the U.S. presidential election results, coalition members agreed to have this referendum take place in Spring.

But wait, are we even talking about a referendum? There are some problems here.

The Estonian constitution does not allow for legal amendments just through referendum, only when this referendum has a 3/5 backing in parliament.

So after much legal arguing, it was finally decided that the referendum would not concern a legal question, but rather, an "other civil life question" to measure the Estonian people's feelings.

This would also prevent the coalition from collapsing, if the answer is "no".

After they reached an agreement on how to hold this referendum, they started to think about the phrasing of the question. This took them a while, but finally they settled on the answer: "does marriage in Estonia apply only to a union btw a man and a woman?

The phrasing of this question was immediately criticized, as Estonian family law already defines legal marriage as being between a man and a woman. So after a few more weeks, the question was changed to "should marriage in Estonia remain the union between a man and a woman"

When asked whether a confirmative answer would have legal implications, the coalition responded with "yes", possibly allowing for the restriction of expanding the definition of marriage in the future.

However, they argued a "no" would not carry similar legal implications.

Finally, the proposed draft for this law reached parliament on December 14th and an attempt to throw it out was narrowly defeated (48-51). This allows for a second reading in parliament, which is to take place later this month.

However, during this period, any member of parliament has the right to add a number of modifications to a draft law. In total, the opposition introduced nearly 9200 modifications. Estonian parliamentary law requires these modifications be discussed.

And this is where things went crazy. Yesterday, the constitutional committee president Anti Poolmaets unilaterally decided that their upcoming meeting would take place online. When asked if this was so he could turn off opposition candidates' microphones, he replied: yes.

(This decision is not only in in violation of Estonian parliamentary law, which was also pointed out to him, but is all the more regrettable because Poolamets actually specializes in constitutional law.)

This morning several members of the constitutional committee, including @kajakallas and @LaanemetsLauri went to the committee's office, where the president demanded they leave at once. When that didn't happen, he himself ended up leaving.

Finally, as the meeting took place (partially online), as @PRB_Raimond has indicated, committee president Poolamets refused to even allow opposition members to turn on their microphones and defend their modifications to the draft law.

In light of what happened at the Capitol, I believe it is absolutely necessary that people understand how easy it is to simply ignore laws and procedures, when you are obsessed with a single non-issue and try to push it through, no matter the cost.

This referendum, which will not solve any problems, but will only cause deeper social rifts. And in attaining that, it has become quite clear that our ruling government is willing to break the law, as long as they think they can get away with it.

I am pretty sure I left out some other insane episodes in this nightmare of a series of events, so forgive me.

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