The election on March 5, 1995, for Estonia’s national parliament, the Riigikogu, were conducted normally, without any serious violations of the election law or international standards. A seventeen-member delegation of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly (OSCEPA) concluded that the election was free and fair. The OSCE Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) reported that [the election was] carried out in accordance with the principles contained in the electoral law and there are no major matters which the representatives wish to highlight. ODIHR has submitted several suggestions to the Riigikogu and the National Electoral Committee for improving technical aspects of the process.
Political party structures are noticeably undeveloped in the northeast, and in none of the polling stations were any local observers encountered. Discussions at the National Electoral Commission in Tallinn and with local precinct officials revealed some disagreement about the procedure for admitting local observers, around 700 of whom had registered with the National Electoral Commission prior to the election. In any case, the lack of local observers probably indicated general confidence by the citizenry that the government was capable of holding an orderly and honest election without the need for monitors. Checks with other international observers indicated that the only local observers noted were in Tallinn, and precious few of these.
