Honourable citizens of Republic of Estonia, dear guests,

I have been invited here to welcome you on the occasion of the conference commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Estonian Basic Law. I am going to do that in the beautiful albeit forgotten Estonian manner with the words: ''More power to your elbow''!

That greeting conventionally calls for the answer ''More power is needed!''

This day and the next one will supply this answer with meaningful message hopefully driving home to the citizens of the Republic of Estonia.

I am welcoming you and the Basic Law as the Head of State, to quit the political arena in 2001. On this finishing line I am thinking of the Estonian people, the Estonian Rechtsstaat, of my eventual successor. I would like to generalise the public opinion and the heretofore effective political practice with the hope that we manage to locate within ourselves the moral power for balanced estimates to the Basic Law.

The Basic Law became effective on the year of 1992, being as it is the offspring of its epoch. It holds in itself the hopes of the transition period and the terrors of the transition period. The hopes to restore, after the long occupation period, the Rechtsstaat, which every citizen of Estonia would recognise as his own. The terrors, that the refined brainwashing of the totalitarian regime can eventually turn, with its populist slogans, against the Rechtsstaat and, with the help of the very mechanisms of the civil rights, pave the way to neo-Soviet restoration. This has not been the case. What is even more - the Republic of Estonia has been included into the group of countries with whom the European Union will engage in negotiations for accession to the European Union. This is the highest possible esteem to the Basic Law, which became applicable in the transition period in July 1992; the founding mothers and fathers - progenitors of our Basic Law have deserved the heartfelt gratitude of citizens of Estonia therefor.

However. as the Head of State I will have to admit that the strength of the Basic Law under the transition period has turned out to be the weakness of the Basic Law later, in the dramatically new political and social context.

I am restricting myself to the problem range directly concerning the Head of State. Head of State is one among the seven constitutional institutions of Estonia. Professor Uibopuu in his analysis on functions of the Head of State in Republic of Estonia arrived at the conclusion that the Head of State is first and foremost the Keeper of the Basic Law. This is reflected in the obligations of the Head of State to proclaim the laws, provided the law is compatible with the international obligations of Estonia and the Basic Law of Estonia; that failing to be the case, he is entitled to renounce to proclaim the law. Unluckily, this constitutional function has been perceived as the lack of respect, effrontery to the legislators. This attitude has brought about deplorable consequences. The State Assembly has at its disposal a powerful lever to put pressure to bear. Unlike the practice of member states of European Union, the Estonian legislators enjoy the right and obligation to approve the budget estimate of the Chancellery of the Head of State by separate items of expenditure. This has made the postulate of balanced separation of powers a turn of phrase sounding hollow. For example, the Government has been made to discuss, whether and in what amount to finance an official trip of the Head of State abroad. In fact this puts the Head of State in the position like it was featured in our first Basic Law of 1920. In other words, our political practice has posed the question of whether Estonia needs the institution of the President at all?

This question, ladies and gentlemen, is up to you to decide. You know that in the virgin years of the Republic the Prime Minister also performed the tasks of the State Elder. In international relations he was addressed as President. Both solutions have their positive and negative sides, however they are much better than the current indeterminacy. If the Riigikogu (Parliament) and the expert committee of the Basic Law tend to retain the current solution it will entail the need to elect the Head of State by two stages, by the electors elected all over the country.

Assessments that you will form today and tomorrow will have the straightest bearing on problems of security of Estonia. There is a serious controversy to be faced here, coded into the Basic Law and not stemming from the inadequacy of the political culture. I mean the conflict between the Minister of Defence and the Chief of Defence Force. I can assure you with absolute certainty: however efficiently the soldier be trained, however well he be armed with modern gadgets, when the sequence of orders is vague, ambiguous and drags like the ox's drool, the best conceivable army will collapse like the house of cards. Here too I see two solutions, excluding one another and inherently contradictory.

If we proceed consequentially from the current Basic Law, the supreme head of the state defence must be the Prime Minister. In that case the Riigikogu (Parliament) shall have to vest the Prime Minister with respective credentials, warranting the continuity of the state defence and not leaving it at the mercy of cabinet shifts. At the same time the mechanism of civil control will have to be rewritten, with the new vision. Civil control is a two-way road.

If, on the contrary the high Assembly should prefer the current solution it will inevitably entail the need to restructure the chain of command, so that the acts of the Minister of Defence should be countersigned by the Head of State as the supreme head of the state defence. The current solution is like the two-headed eagle, however the army is founded on the sole authority and responsibility. An efficiently operating national security system is in itself a deterrent, a guarantee of security: it's implication is that it will work effectively also in the crisis situation, - being able, as such, to prevent the crisis. The honourable Chancellor of Law presumes that any decision whatsoever is a decision made by the Head of State, the Prime Minister and the respective Minister on the basis of consensus. This presumption fails to always hold true, I am sorry to say.

Playacting the separation of powers can cost us both the democracy and the state.

The separation of powers is as simple as the apothecary's scales: should you remove the balance weight from one scalepan, the second one will lower. Restriction of one constitutional institution will expand the other's authority. In this way we may depart from this public law model we opted for five years back, not really noticing it; we may well have already departed from the said model. One can not play chess, making intermittently the draughts moves.

I am happy to point out that the Government of the Republic has understood that, setting up a committee tackling the expert assessment of the Basic Law.

I would like to emphasise that in case of the Basic Law it is imperative that we understand, both a the legislator and the people that the Basic Law will work only provided its role and need for improvement are perceived in the widest possible meaning. The constitutional supervisory bodies are not only the President of the Republic, the Chancellor of Law and the State Court. The constitutional supervision is the right and responsibility of every citizen of Estonia. Every citizen of Estonia must be able to assess, while communicating with the state authority, whether the ordinances and decrees of the state authority directed to him are compatible with the law. This is the most effective way to safeguard the constancy of the Basic Law in all its changes. In order to thereby - I am referring now to the opening phrase of the Basic Law - promote and consolidate our State.

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