Toomas Hendrik Ilves

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Toomas Hendrik Ilves : biography

26 December 1953 – living

Toomas Hendrik Ilves ( born 26 December 1953) is the fourth President of Estonia, in office since 2006. Ilves worked as a diplomat and journalist, and he was the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the 1990s. He served in the government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2002. Later, he was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2006. He was elected as President of Estonia by an electoral college on 23 September 2006 and his term as President began on 9 October 2006.

Career

Ilves worked as a research assistant in Columbia University Department of Psychology from 1974 to 1979. From 1979 to 1981 he served as assistant director and English teacher at the Open Education Center in Englewood, New Jersey.. Ilves then moved to Vancouver, Canada; from 1981 to 1983 he was director and administrator of arts in Vancouver Arts Center and from 1983 to 1984 he taught Estonian literature and linguistics in Simon Fraser University.

From 1984 to 1993, Ilves worked in Munich, Germany as a journalist for Radio Free Europe, being the head of its Estonian desk since 1988. As Estonia had restored its independence in 1991, Ilves became Ambassador of Estonia to the United States in 1993,, U.S. State Department website. also serving as Ambassador to Canada and Mexico at the same time.

In December 1996, Ilves became Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving until he resigned in September 1998, when he became member of a small opposition party (Peasants’ Party, agrarian-conservative). Ilves was soon elected chairman of the People’s Party (reformed Peasants’ Party), which formed an electoral cartel with the Moderates, a centrist party. After the March 1999 parliamentary election he became foreign minister again, serving until 2002, when the so-called Triple Alliance collapsed. He supported Estonian membership in the European Union and succeeded in starting the negotiations which led to Estonia joining the European Union on 1 May 2004. From 2001 to 2002 he was the leader of the People’s Party Moderates. He resigned from the position after the party’s defeat in the October 2002 municipal elections, in which the party received only 4.4% of the total votes nationwide. In early 2004, the Moderates party renamed itself the Estonian Social Democratic Party.

In 2003, Ilves became an observer member of the European Parliament and, on 1 May 2004, a full member. In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, Ilves was elected MEP in a landslide victory for the Estonian Social Democratic Party. He sat with the Party of European Socialists group in the Parliament. Katrin Saks took over his MEP seat when Ilves became President of Estonia in 2006. In 2011, he was re-elected for a second five-year term.

Personal life

Ilves has been married twice. With his first wife, American psychologist Dr. Merry Bullock he has two children: son Luukas Kristjan (b. 1987), who graduated from Stanford University in 2009 and daughter Juulia Kristiine (b. 1992). In 2004, Ilves married his longtime partner Evelin Int-Lambot with whom he has one daughter, Kadri Keiu (b. 2003).

In public, Ilves almost exclusively wears bow ties. He says that this is because his late father used to do so.

Ilves has a brother, Andres Ilves, formerly head of the Persian and Pashto World Service of the BBC. Until the early 2000s, Andres Ilves was head of the Afghanistan bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Presidential elections

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and President [[George W. Bush, in Estonia 2006]] Ilves was nominated by the Reform Party, Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica and his own Social Democratic Party on 23 March 2006, as a candidate for the 2006 presidential election.

On 29 August, Ilves was the only candidate in the second and the third round of the presidential election in Riigikogu, the Parliament of Estonia (he was supported by an electoral coalition consisting of the governing Reform Party plus the Social Democrats and the Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica which form the parliamentary opposition). These rounds of the elections were boycotted by the Centre Party and the People’s Union (the MPs didn’t withdraw ballots), who were hoping to re-elect incumbent Arnold Rüütel (who chose not to participate in the Riigikogu rounds) in the Electors’ Assembly. Ilves gathered 64 votes out of 65 ballots. Therefore, one deputy of the three party alliance supporting Ilves did not vote in favour of his candidacy. A two-third majority in the 101-seat Riigikogu was required, so he was not elected in Riigikogu. His candidacy was automatically transferred to the next round in the Electors’ Assembly on 23 September.