1. Mart Helme is an Estonian politician, diplomat and historian who served as the Minister of the Interior from 2019 to 2020.
17 Facts About Mart Helme
1. 2.
Mart Helme was the longtime chairman of the national conservative Conservative People's Party of Estonia from 13 April 2013 to 4 July 2020 when he was succeeded by his son Martin Helme.
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Mart Helme was the editor of the Estonian translation of "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx published in 1974.
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From 2003 to 2005, Mart Helme was a member of the agrarian-centrist People's Union of Estonia.
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In 2012, when the party merged with the Estonian Patriotic Movement, Mart Helme became a member of the new Conservative People's Party of Estonia.
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In 2015 parliamentary election, Mart Helme was elected to parliament with 6,714 individual votes and in the 2019 parliamentary election he increased his support to 9,170 individual votes.
7.
In March 2019 Mart Helme said to the press that he wishes that one day his party would be the sole ruling party of Estonia.
8.
On 2 May 2019, Mart Helme was named First Deputy Prime Minister.
9.
On 9 November 2020 a no-confidence vote, filed by the opposition against Mart Helme, was scheduled to take place in the Estonian parliament, due to Mart Helme's comments in a radio show where he claimed that the 2020 US elections were forged and his comments about the president-elect Joe Biden.
10.
On 27 February 2020, Mart Helme stated at a government press conference that the common cold had been renamed as the coronavirus and that in his youth nothing like that existed.
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Mart Helme recommended wearing warm socks and mustard patches as well as spreading goose fat on one's chest as treatments for the virus.
12.
Mart Helme said that the virus would pass within a few days to a week just like the common cold.
13.
The leaders of the other parties who formed a coalition with Mart Helme stated that "his views should be ignored" and that "this is not what the coalition agreed on".
14.
On 13 April 2022, in widely condemned remarks made during a sitting only hours after Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a speech to the Riigikogu, Mart Helme claimed that HIV and other infectious diseases are going to return to Estonia, brought in by war refugees from Ukraine, many of whom may get involved in prostitution in Estonia.
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Mart Helme's current wife, Helle-Moonika Mart Helme, is an MP in the Riigikogu for EKRE.
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Mart Helme has a son, Martin Helme, now leader of EKRE, and a daughter, literary scholar Maarja Vaino, both from a previous marriage to art historian and critic Sirje Helme.
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Mart Helme has worked as a journalist, publisher and diplomat.