The extraordinary events of March 10-14 have thrown the Latvian political system into unprecedented turmoil. It has turned on its head almost all previously held suppositions about the political situation: a seemingly strong and unshakeable coalition – the first government ever returned after a Latvian election – now looks vulnerable and amazingly immature in its response to the crisis. Meanwhile, a president who some took to be simply biding her time to the end of her period of office with one stroke has seemingly swung the balance of power away from an increasingly panicky government. And the first of Latvia’s oft-accused oligarchs, Ventspils mayor Aivars Lembergs, has been arrested on serious charges of corruption—for many the cherry on the cake

On March 10, President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga used her constitutional power to delay the proclamation of amendments to Latvia’s security laws, amendments passed twice by the Saeima. She had already sent them back the first time but they was passed unchanged by the Saeima again. According to Latvia’s constitution, a president in such circumstances can delay proclamation for two months, but then a chain of events is automatically triggered leading to a possible referendum: the Central Elections Commission begins the task of collecting signatures from citizens who want a referendum to decide on the legislation’s fate. If 10 percent of the number of voters who voted in the previous Saeima elections sign for a referendum, it must be held. This will require around 150,000 signatures. This is the first time this specific mechanism has been put into effect since the regaining of independence.

That is the constitutional side. The surrounding politics are intense.

Concerns over the security legislation relate to both its content and the process by which it was pushed through. The legislation increases parliamentary supervison of the various security services including military intelligence services, and increases the number of people—parliamentarians but also their aides and people designated by them—who can have access to operative information of the security services. Such concerns came even from the NATO defense alliance.

Concerns over the content were heightened by the way the legislation was pushed through. It was first adopted by the government during a Saeima recess, on the basis of another rarely used power in the constitution in Article 81: the power a government has to adopt important legislation when the Saeima is in recess, but then has to have this approved by the Saeima on its return—a provision common to many democracies but used sparingly and largely only for emergencies. Despite protests, the goverment also gagged debate when it pushed the amendments through the Saeima, citing the most serious national security urgency for doing so.

The goverment melts

Latvia has had referendums before, most notably in 1998 when the then government won a bitterly contested referendum on changes to the citizenship law, but on this occasion the response saw the government in disoriented damage control. Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis immediately offered to drop the contentious legislation—so much for national urgency—and various coalition leaders also offered to repeal Article 81. No one in the government stood up to defend the legislation, which had been pushed through with such insistence on its importance. Amazingly, talk swiftly turned to whether the govenment should stand down or whether it will fall, despite its comfortable majority in the Saeima, and many urged the president to dissolve the Saeima. It is a pregorative in the constitution but has never been used.

So cravenly apologetic has the government been, and so unable to defend its actions, that speculation increased on why it had tried so hard to push its legislation through. The government had been accused of using the legislation to corruptly help its mates in business forestall various corruption and shady deal investigations. Others have pointed to the sheer arrogance of a government that beleived it could do anything with its majority. Its abrupt abandonment of its legislation (it clearly fears it has no chance of winning the referendum) and complete turnaround on a number of related issues has given the appearance of a political rabble, with veteran commentator Aivars Ozoliņš characterising the government’s response roughly as “Anthing, anything, just don’t spank us!”

The arrest of Lembergs just four days later turned an already peculiar crisis into more of a circus.

Oligarchs

No more common term of abuse in Eastern Europe exists than “oligarch.” President Vladimir Putin justified his undemocratic grab of all significant power in Russia as a defence of the nation against oligarchs reaping fortunes off Russian resources and sucking the country dry. Latvia’s far less ostentatious oligarchs have in turn not escaped investigation, as in last year’s “Jūrmalgate,” where the buying of votes in the mayoral election involved Tautas partija (People’s Party) ex-leader Andris Šķēle and Latvijas Pirmā Partija (First Party of Latvia) leader and chief nasty Ainārs Šlesers, who was dumped from the Transportation Ministry for his involvement but now is back in office. The concluded Jūrmalgate trial admirably sentenced the smaller front figures to gaol terms, but the shadow remains over Šķēle and Šlesers. All along such figures have claimed the criticism of them is politically motivated, seeking to discredit hard-working leaders and economy-enhancing businessmen.

Lembergs is seen as the most significant of the oligarchs, and until now the most unreachable, ensconced in his Ventspils mayoral seat with its glittering civic environment. He did however wander into the political field when the aļo un Zemnieku Savienība (Union of Greens and Farmers) proposed him as a presidential candidate—a proposal from which it is now also hastily retreating.

Significantly, the president herself had briefly touched on her concerns that the security legislation could be used to favour oligarchs—she used that word—when delaying the legislation. And when Lembergs was arrested on the morning of March 14, the conspiracy theories were given full rein. Was there a connection between the presiden’s actions and the impending arrest of Lembergs? Did the president know? Can this be coincidence?

Lembergs was arrested for a series of alleged corrupt deals largely dating from the mid-1990s involving undeclared offshore arrangements and a conflict of interest with his mayoral position. He was denied bail as it was feared he could attempt to obstruct justice. His lawyers and the newspaper he owns, Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze, are working overtime to argue the conspiracy. But in more poor news for the government, other figures such as a controversial coalition candidate for the Constitutional Court has been linked to poor court decisions made in favour of Lembergs.

Opposition paper Diena is somewhat glowing that its own theories of the danger of oligarchy, which it has argued repeatedly and somewhat repetitively, seem to be justified.

And what a time for a great opposition political party to reassert itself and take full advantage of the situation to demand a change to a disorganised and defensive government. But it is not to be, as the main opposition party, Jaunais laiks (New Era) is embroiled in inter-party disputes, and its increasingly criticised leader Einars Repše has said little, mouthed a few populist slogans, and remarkably has been rather distancing himself from the fray.

This completely unanticipated presidential initiative has revealed a worrying weakness in government and the formerly invincible coalition parties. While much still remains to work itself out, it has seriously steered Latvian politics away from “business as usual.”

The past year in Latvian politics was not only eventful, but one that could well be pivotal: an election and a new government (and, surprisingly for Latvia, a continuation of the previous government); a successful NATO defense alliance summit; a continuing high profile for President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga; an economy running almost red hot, and a by now usual lot of scandals, new and continuing.

The central political event—the 9th Saeima election—was unique. No new party arose to challenge the major incumbents, which had been a recurring pattern in previous elections. Moreover, this was the first time the coalition that governed before an election was able to achieve a majority in the election, and the first time that a prime minister holding office before an election was reappointed after that election. The coalition of Tautas partija (People’s Party), Zaļo un Zemnieku Savienība (Union of Greens and Farmers) and Latvijas Pirmā partija (First Party of Latvia, or LPP, now combined with the Latvijas ceļš, or Latvia’s Way) gained a bare majority of 51 spots in the 100-seat Saeima. But the coalition took the small Tēvzemei un brīvībai / LNNK (For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK, or TB/LNNK) into the coalition to feather the majority.

The big losers were Jaunais laiks (New Era), strongly supported by Latvian voters in the West, but losing favour in Latvia itself after withdrawing from the coalition in early 2006 and its once popular leader, Einars Repše, becoming widely distrusted.

A big winner was Saskaņas centrs (Harmony Center), which broke away from the previous pro-Russian coalition Par cilvēku tiesībām vienotā Latvijā (For Human Rights in a United Latvia, or PCTVL) and re-badged itself as a party willing to take a constructive place in Latvian politics and government.

How should this surprising election result, and seeming stability at last in political party composition, be understood? Two fundamentally irreconcilable interpretations have quickly come to the fore. One is the claim of stability and a consolidation of effective government. The coalition is popular, has not made any huge mistakes in government, its leading opposition party is in disarray, economically the country is bounding ahead and the government is attending effectively to seemingly insuperable problems of low incomes and poor social conditions. (You can see this line continually supported in the daily newspaper Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze.)

Equally strongly, critics of this government (you can see them clearly in another leading daily newspaper, Diena) see it as a consolidation, certainly, but a consolidation of oligarchy. For these critics, the leading party officials see government as their own private business, particularly Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis, Tautas partija’s behind-the-scenes leader Andris Šķēle and the head-kicking leader of LPP, Ainārs Šlesers.

Certainly, one of the most worrying aspects of the new government is the steady politicisation and insisting on appointing its own (“savējos“) to sensitive positions. Most recently, the main coalition parties tried but failed to appoint Tautas partija member Ringolds Balodis to the position of ombudsman. A spectacularly poorly qualified candidate, this law professor‘s main specialty is law of religion. He seemed totally out of depth and was proven to be so quite starkly in a television debate with the other candidate, Rasma Kārkliņa. Proposed for the position by TB/LNNK, she is a Western Latvian and author of a recent major work on post–Soviet corruption, The System Made Me Do It. But she was anathema to the ruling coalition parties, so in the end no candidate got sufficient votes in the Saeima, leaving the president fuming—once more—over the indecisiveness of the Saeima.

Even worse for its implications was the appointment to the Constitutional Court (Satversmes tiesa) of three candidates who were each severely criticised as inadequate by the Saeima’s own Judicial Affairs Committee. But the same parliamentarians from the coalition parties who expressed this criticism in the end voted for the candidates in the Saeima.

And in a move of extreme cynicism, the coalition appointed once-head LPP guru Jānis Šmits to chair of the Saeima Human Rights and Social Affairs Committee. Šmits, a Lutheran prelate, was notable in 2006 for his extreme homophobia and sustained attack on the Rīga Pride march, and his otherwise overtly authoritarian stance on every social issue. So bad had his reputation become that he was not elected in his own right to the Saeima (his own party supporters crossed out his name in droves), but came into the Saeima with a so-called “soft mandate,“ replacing another LPP member who was appointed a cabinet minister.

Increasing concern over the coalition parties—matched by a total impossibility of any chance of redress—came to a head when a group of minor parties brought a court action claiming illegal overspending by the coalition parties during the election campaign. Groups of people closely allied to the coalition had organised themselves into independent NGOs and produced extensive advertising before the election, praising the incumbents and the economic prosperity they had brought to Latvia. The court came to the not very difficult conclusion that this was a subterfuge to circumvent campaign spending limits, but declined to order the elections invalid.

And another moment of foreboding is the government’s volte face on the need to sign a border agreement with Russia with a unilateral attachment detailing the past history of border agreements, which also includes the loss of the previous Latvian territory of Abrene. Having derailed a previous attempt to sign the border agreement by insisting on such an attachment, the government now insists the signing can go ahead without such a statement, and that the legal continuity of the Latvian state back to pre-World War II days can be guaranteed by other means. This will demand the closest scrutiny.

The present mood of the coalition may spell a difficult time for Latvians abroad. The hostility to Kārkliņš revives a previous history of antagonism to Latvians from the West, most notably in the temporarily lapsed proposal to make a large number of public positions closed to people with dual citizenship.

Moreover, the LPP is increasingly warming to the idea of uniting with the large Saskaņas centrs, which has been downplaying being pro-Russian and now presents itself as a party very much of the centre with a desire to be in government. This too has a background: over the past couple of years Moscow has slowly turned away from its previous great hope—the hard-line pro-Moscow faction in PCTVL with its strident oppositionalism—and has increasingly wanted a party that could be in government. Saskaņas centrs fits this bill perfectly, and the question can be asked whether we are seeing a genuinely moderate new party or a Trojan horse.

Meanwhile, for LPP and its ambitious leader Šlesers an amalgamation would provide an opportunity to become the largest party in the Saeima. The politicians of Saskaņas centrs (and of course PCTVL) are unreservedly hostile to Latvians from abroad playing any part in Latvian affairs. Unless the coalition in its present or expanded form trips up on its own ambitions—a not impossible course of events—we may all be in for a tough four years.

An unpleasant and seemingly hopeless air surrounds the coming 9th Saeima election on Oct. 7. A quite spiteful pre-election campaign has seen accusations, counter-accusations and dirty tricks flying around every major party. In the most recent September polls a record number of people were still undecided about who to vote for, and many have decided not to vote at all.

Two of the latest September polls—one from the eight largest Latvian cities, the other conducted across the whole country—although differing a little in figures do not differ in overall relativities of the parties, indicating reliability. Most strikingly, Jaunais laiks (New Era) has continued its long popularity slide and now sits in fourth place with about 10 percent of the vote. Tautas partija (People’s Party) tops the polls, with the urban poll giving it 20 percent but the national poll 13 percent. The pro-Moscow Par cilvēku tiesībām vienotā Latvijā (For Human Rights in a United Latvia, or PCTVL) comes in second in the urban poll and third in the national poll, while Zaļo un Zemnieku Savienība (Union of Greens and Farmers, or ZZS) comes in second in the national poll and third in the cities poll. A finding of both polls is that a large number of parties may garner the 5 percent needed to be in the Saiema—perhaps seven (one more that in the current parliament) or even eight parties. Apart from the parties mentioned so far, Latvijas Pirmā Partija (First Party of Latvia, which is on the ballot together with Latvijas Ceļš), the more modestly Moscow-oriented Saskaņas centrs (Harmony Centre), Tēvzemei un brīvībai / LNNK (For Fatherland and Freedom, or TB/LNNK) and Latvijas Sociāldemokrātiskā Strādnieku partija (Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party, or LSDSP) all have scored 5 percent or more in one of the polls.

Smearing, dirty tricks and deceptions have been at the fore of campaigning. Almost weekly real or purported bugged telephone calls have been used to discredit one or the other party, so much so that there is now serious concern that various parts of the bureaucracy or individual corrupt officials with phone tapping powers have acted politically.

Another scandal involves groups close to Tautas Partija but acting under the umbrella of a civil society organisation sponsoring a television advertising campaign that consists of unalloyed praise for the current coalition government, thus apparently circumventing stricter campaign spending laws for political parties. And Latvijas Pirmā Partija, with its strange mix of religious ministers and oligarchs (the head-kicking plutocrat Ainārs Šlesers is its leader)—and infamous now for its virulent attacks on gay rights—continues to play its morality card on every issue, while its accident-prone Interior Minister Dzintars Jaundžeikars continues to make a mess of trying to reform the police and deal with other crises.

While scandals abound, two factors of a more substantial kind are clearly at work in recent trends. First, the simple advantage of incumbency is strongly helping all the coalition parties (Tautas partija, Latvijas Pirmā Partija and ZZS). They are seen to be working, and they prosper from this. And the ZZS hopes to prosper further by gaining the support of controversial Ventspils Mayor Aivars Lembergs, much criticised for possible corruption by some but praised for energetic wealth-producing civic leadership by others. He has nominated as that party’s candidate for prime minister.

By the same token, the second factor has been the continuing decline of Jaunais laiks. Its leader Einars Repše is under a cloud and was forced to resign as defense minister over money matters, but this seems now the least of his worries. His erratic behaviour and personal aggrandisement has turned off many including some in his own party, and he has even given the unprecedented advice to voters to cast ballots for his party, but to strike his name out if they find him personally unacceptable. Jaunais laiks has drawn new candidates, most significantly Sandra Kalniete, a former foreign minister and provisional European Commissioner, but the party is finding it hard going. Jaunais laiks has not been helped by a number of scandals, including the Jūrmala City Council where all three of the party’s members on the Council were expelled from the ranks after they did not follow its directives on significant local planning issues. And now the phone taps… But this is above all a legacy of the party leaving a difficulty coalition government (twice!) and giving it a reputation of not being able to work constructively with other parties, fatal in a political system where coalitions are the norm. Opposition has proven to be a wilderness, clearly a tactical mistake.

How Latvians outside Latvia vote

The 8th Saeima elections in 2002 were a significant turnaround in the way that citizens outside Latvia voted. Up until then, citizens abroad had been for the most part strong supporters of the more nationalist parties, particularly TB/LNNK. But in the 2002 elections some 52 percent voted for Jaunais laiks and only 12 percent for TB/LNNK, with smaller votes going to PCTVL (6 percent, largely voters in Russia and Israel), ZZS (5 percent only for the traditional party of pre-World War II leader Kārlis Ulmanis) and Tautas Partija (5 percent).

This represented a significant rebuff for TB/LNNK. Jaunais laiks’ promise of competent and uncorrupted government was a stronger drawcard than the still rather raw nationalism of the TB/LNNK, a quite historic shift of allegiances from voters outside Latvia who had been very much sticking to older conservative and anti-Russian political views. Can TB/LNNK win this electorate back? In its latest policy statement, TB/LNNK has tried to shift attention onto socio-economic issues, particularly the extent of poverty and inequality that it sees as threatening the Latvian nation as much as bad national policies. Yet its platform still contains all the old ethno-national chestnuts that have painted it into a corner: it wants to stop naturalisation (an absurd, not to say dangerous, policy), make all teaching in schools in Latvian only (equally unrealistic, when the present compromise over 60-40 teaching in secondary schools is working), make it easier to strip citizenship off those unloyal to Latvia and other smaller nationalist idiocies.

Readers who can understand Latvian would do well to see the sharp but very fair critique of this party offered on the political analysis Web site Politika.lv.

The same Web site also has an incisive analysis of the woes that have befallen Jaunais laiks. Despite its problems, the party still represents in a sense the newest voice in Latvian politics and its promises have not been completely empty. For example, over the past few years there has been more and more unmasking of corruption by better-functioning anti-corruption bodies, very much in line with the party’s intent. Many voters may still be tempted to trust this party one more time, even if they strike out Repše. But the party will be hard put to overcome its seeming lack of political nous and instead embrace hard work, persistence (particularly persistence in government) and internal discipline from the leader down. It still seems as if Jaunais laiks is more concerned with principles than practice. As a somewhat telling example of this approach, veteran western Latvian leader and activist Uldis Grava recently circulated a letter strongly urging voters to vote for Jaunais laiks (of which he is a member), but advanced no arguments for why they should, gave no critique of other parties or details of what Jaunais laiks stands for, instead simply saying that he had found them very honest politicians and basically good guys.

Voters, whether inside or outside Latvia, are not faced with easy choices. Yet in what may be a close election, each vote paradoxically will be extremely valuable in deciding the outcome.