04. May 05
Ken-Marti Vaher was born in
Tallinn on
5 September 1974.
He studied at Tallinn Secondary School No 2, which was specialised in English, and which he graduated from in 1992. Next to his studies he was actively engaged in choral singing under the conduction of Tiia Loitme, acquired the fundamental principals of political science at the Youth School of Politics and belonged to the Estonian youth badminton team. He was also one of the founders of the association Res Publica in January 1992.
K.-M. Vaher started his studies at the faculty of law at the University of Tartu in 1992. He took the degree of Baccalaureus artium in 1996. The subject matter of his Bachelor’s thesis was Plato's "The State".
In 1995, alongside his studies, he started to work as an adviser to the Constitutional Committee of the Riigikogu and his official duties involved provision of legal consultation for the committee and cooperation in the legislative proceeding of draft Acts.
In 1996-1998 K.-M. Vaher took part as a legal adviser in the work of the Commission of Constitutional Judicial Expertise, especially examining Chapters IV (The Riigikogu), VII (Legislation) and XV (Amendment of the Constitution) of the Constitution.
In 1998 he started to take his Master's level degree in the specialty of Organisational Behaviour at Tallinn Pedagogical University.
In June 1998 Juhan Parts, the Auditor General, invited K.-M. Vaher to his team. Organisation development and human resource management became his primary official duties. At the beginning of 1999 K.-M. commenced to perform the duties of the director of the State Audit Office.
After three and a half years at the State Audit Office, in September 2001, K.-M. Vaher accepted the offer to occupy the post of the Secretary-General of Res Publica. His first challenge was to conduct the preparation for the foundation of the new party on 8 December 2001, and thereafter, to build up in a short time a political force corresponding to European values so that the party could participate in the elections for local governments in 2002.
K.-M. Vaher has been associated with Res Publicaga for more than ten years, being the Deputy Chairman of Res Publica in 1993–1995 and from 1998 a member of the governing body of Respublica. From 1994 to 1996 Vaher belonged to the Representative Body of the Students of Tartu University (Tartu Ülikooli Üliõpilaskonna Edustus); in 1993-1994 he was a founder member and the Chairman of the Baltic Organisation of Democratic Youth (BODY), an organisation, which unifies the right-wing youth of the Baltic States. Vaher joined the Academic Regional Subunit of the Defence League in 2001.
In August 2002 Ken-Marti Vaher was elected the Deputy Chairman of Res Publica; in October 2002 he was elected a member of the Tallinn City Council and in April 2003 a member of the Riigikogu. In April 2004 Vaher was appointed the Minister of Justice of the government of Juhan Parts. He was a minister until the 21st of March 2005.
In addition to Estonian, his mother tongue, he has a good command in English, Finnish and Russian.
He prefers philosophy, science of the state, history, music and sport (basketball, football, squash, badminton and others) as hobbies.
Ken-Marti Vaher's CV
