Estonian MPS see little hope of electing president .
Belinda Goldsmith
TALLINN 1996-08-27
Estonia 's parliament failed for a second time to elect a president on Tuesday , dealing a blow to incumbent Lennart Meri and pushing the country towards stalemate in its choice of a new head of state .
Neither Meri , who oversaw Estonia 's first steps into statehood after the collapse of the Soviet Union , nor his arch-rival , former communist Arnold Ruutel , have secured the 68 votes necessary from the 101-member parliament .
Meri garnered 49 votes and Meri 34 in Tuesday 's ballot for the five-year presidency of Estonia .
A third and final vote was due to be held when parliament reconvened on Tuesday but legislators were not expecting a clear result .
If there is no result the decision will be ceded to an electoral college .
" The votes are a strong message to Meri that he is not favoured by some politicians any more , " Reform Party head Heiki Kranich told Reuters .
Under a constitution agreed in 1992 , a year after independence , the president has no executive powers .
His only political role is to smoothe the functioning of government in periods of crisis .
But Meri , 67 , has been accused in parliament of taking too much power and not always consulting parliamentarians before making decisions .
His relations with a leftist-led government have sometimes been tense .
His support in the first round of voting on Monday was much lower than expected , scoring only 45 votes , which political analysts put down as a vote of no confidence in his performance .
This support only inched up to 49 in the second vote .
Support for Ruutel , 68 , remained constant at 34 votes .
If the third vote fails to give either Meri or Ruutel 68 votes , the parliamentary speaker will convene an electoral college of 101 MPs and 273 local goverment representatives to hold a new poll that could include new nominations .
This would be the first time that the former Soviet republic has had to call together an electoral college .
In its first presidential election in 1992 Meri won the necessary votes in in a parliamentary election against Ruutel .
Parliamentary organisers said the exact timetable remained unclear but it would probably take about a month to organise an electoral college which could also hold several rounds of voting before a clear winner emerges .