The Reform Party board decided as early as January 2010 that it would support Toomas Hendrik Ilves in the presidential election in fall 2011 if he decided to run for a second term.

"The Reform Party believes that President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has been an outstanding advocate for Estonia on the world stage and remains the best head of state Estonia could have today," Andrus Ansip, then chairman of the Reform Party and prime minister, said. "If President Ilves decides to run for a second term, he can certainly count on the Reform Party's support," Ansip added.

Only four parties cleared the electoral threshold in the Riigikogu election preceding the presidential election: the election-winning Reform Party secured 33 seats, the Center Party 26, IRL 23 and the Social Democratic Party (SDE) 19.

When the Reform Party, IRL and SDE decided to join forces to reelect Ilves, simple arithmetic showed that Ilves had the minimum 68 votes needed to secure another term. The three parties had a combined 75 MPs in the Riigikogu.

In June 2011, however, independent Member of the European Parliament Indrek Tarand unexpectedly announced that he was prepared to run for president of Estonia in the interests of preserving democracy.

"Personally, I don't like elections with only one candidate — even Russia has two presidential candidates," Tarand told the media at the time.

It was Center Party MP Aivar Riisalu who suggested that Tarand consider running in the presidential election.

Edgar Savisaar, then chairman of the Center Party, said Indrek Tarand had a broad range of political views, as a head of state should. "He is not and cannot be solely the Center Party's candidate. He guarantees the Center Party nothing other than equal treatment, which our voters deserve and of which they have been deprived for years."

The Riigikogu convened to elect the president on August 29. In the first round of the presidential election, Ilves received 73 votes and Tarand 25. Three ballots were invalid: two indicated support for both candidates, while one was blank.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves was thus comfortably reelected.

Protest candidate Tarand

Fifteen years later, recalling those events, Indrek Tarand said the idea of his candidacy had actually come entirely from him.

"There's no point denying it — in that sense, the idea was mine. The Center Party was in trouble at the time. They were in a position where everyone else had reached an agreement, while they didn't want to go along with it, but they didn't want to put any of their own megastars forward either, because for some reason party politicians have this notion that second place in a democracy is worth nothing. Aivar liked the idea, passed it on to Savisaar and that's how it happened," Tarand said.

Tarand said he was satisfied that he had been able to give Estonia a presidential election with two candidates. "In that sense, I was very satisfied. It's only really an election when there's a choice. And second place does matter in a democracy," Tarand said.

Tarand also recalled that because he ran as the Center Party's candidate, there were attempts to brand him as being associated with the party, but in the long run they did not succeed.

'Ilves was seriously rattled'

Aivar Riisalu said Tarand was a protest candidate against the presidential election system in place at the time, which remains in place today. "We have always believed that the people should have the right to decide who is president of the Republic of Estonia," he said.

"So I went to Edgar Savisaar and said I had a proposal: I have a good friend who was a close ally of Toomas Hendrik Ilves, so let's have the debate that nobody wanted to hold at all. Let's at least have that debate so the two presidential candidates can argue their cases a little in public. Since Tarand had been secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when Ilves was foreign minister, the two men had a few things to say to each other both on and off the air. Savisaar agreed and that's how the situation came about," Riisalu recalled.

"Ilves seemed really rattled to me. He wasn't happy. He had been certain that he would simply be appointed and could sit back and relax," Riisalu said.

"Because the two men knew each other extremely well and a secretary general also knows about a minister's gray areas, there was plenty of tension. There would have been no point in bringing anyone else into it," he added.

According to Riisalu, Tarand's candidacy achieved its purpose. "People realized that what goes on with presidential elections can at times be a farce," he said.

'Common ground between Tarand and Center surprising'

Olari Koppel, an adviser to the president of the republic at the time, recalled that, in contrast to the 2006 election, the 2011 election was calm and almost entirely devoid of adrenaline.

Contrary to Aivar Riisalu's claim, Koppel said Tarand's candidacy did not rattle Ilves.

"What I remember instead is genuine surprise. Tarand's attitude toward the Center Party was well known. Ilves and Tarand had also been close colleagues from their days at the Foreign Ministry — comrades-in-arms, even. I don't recall Tarand's nomination upsetting anyone," Koppel said.

"The only surprise was that Indrek Tarand and the Center Party found common ground, given that until then the Center Party had not publicly acknowledged Tarand's virtues, and vice versa," he added.

Koppel recalled that while the Reform Party and SDE announced their desire to reelect President Ilves as essentially a done deal, IRL invited Ilves to address its party council and review his record in office. The party decided to support him following a council debate and vote.

"The president continued doing his job day in and day out. As far as I remember, there were no campaign events. Naturally, at the same time, the president's team was discussing priorities for a second term," Koppel said.

In Koppel's assessment, Ilves secured support across party lines because of his success as president and the broad support he enjoyed among the public. "It follows that Ilves had not departed from the positions and values he had articulated ahead of the 2006 election," he noted.

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