President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga has asked Aigars Kalvītis, a member of parliament from the conservative Tautas partija (People’s Party), to become Latvia’s next prime minister and form a new coalition government. He would replace Prime Minister Indulis Emsis, whose minority coalition government fell Oct. 28 when the parliament failed to pass a proposed budget.

The president announced her choice in a Nov. 24 press conference.

Kalvītis, who has twice served in the cabinet of ministers, now will have to decide how to divide the various ministerial posts so that enough political parties are satisfied and will vote in parliament to confirm the new government. The parliament, or Saeima, has 100 seats, 20 of which are controlled by Tautas partija.

Kalvītis said that his party and the conservative Jaunais laiks (New Era) will share the same number of seats in the new government, according to the LETA news agency. Jaunais laiks had hoped its candidate, Krišjānis Kariņš, would be picked by the president as the next prime minister.

The 38-year-old Kalvītis has an educational background in agricultural economics and has studied in the United States and Ireland. He was elected to the 7th Saeima in 1998, but in 1999 was named by Prime Minister Andris Šķēle as the new agriculture minister. When Šķēle was replaced by Prime Minister Andris Bērziņš in 2000, Kalvītis became the minister of economics. In 2002, Kalvītis was elected to the 8th Saeima, where he now leads his party’s caucus.

The Emsis government collapsed when Tautas partija, which has been one of three parties in the minority coalition, turned on the prime minister and voted against his proposed budget on its first reading in the Saeima. Parliamentary rules stipulate that if a government-proposed budget is not passed in its first or second reading, the government is assumed to have lost the confidence of parliament.

The Emsis government will continue to operate until the new government is confirmed.

The first church service ever for Latvians living in Ireland is scheduled in December in Dublin, the Latvian Ev. Lutheran Church Outside Latvia has announced.

The service is scheduled at 2 p.m. Dec. 19 in St. Finian’s Church, 24 Adelaide Road, Dublin. The church is home for the Lutheran Church in Ireland, a congregation for the German ethnic community in Dublin. The service will be led by the Rev. Elīza Zikmane, pastor of the United London Latvian Lutheran Church.

The seeds for the service were sown during the summer when Archbishop Elmārs Ernsts Rozītis visited Ireland and established contacts with the German church and with the Latvian Embassy in Ireland, according to a press release announcing the event. Rozītis, who is based in Germany, heads the Latvian Ev. Lutheran Church Outside Latvia (Latviešu Evaņģēliski Luteriskā Baznīca ārpus Latvijas).

Further information about the service is available by telephone from the Latvian Embassy in Ireland, + 353 1 662 1610, or from the Lutheran Church in Ireland, + 353 1 6766548. Information also is available from the religious Web site www.zvans.lv.

Māras banka, a family-owned Latvian bank founded by a repatriated exile from Venezuela, has been acquired by Finland’s Sampo Bank. The acquisition is pending approval by Latvian authorities.

Started in 1997 by Vilis Vītols and his family, the bank has focused on providing small mortgage loans. At the close of October, Māras banka had assets of EUR 41.2 million and controlled about 3.5 percent of the private housing loan market in Latvia, according to a press release from Sampo.

Māras banka has been owned by Vilis Vītols and his wife, Marta, as well as their daughter, Laura Bulmane, and son-in-law, Nikolajs Sigurds Bulmanis. The Vītolses repatriated to Latvia in 1999. In 2002, they also founded the Vītols Fund, an organization that supports education in Latvia through scholarships and other projects.

Details of the acquisition were not released.