Pre-election campaigns—and pre-election muckraking—are hotting up for the Latvian Saeima (Parliament) elections on Oct. 7. But unlike previous elections, there is no clear front-running party likely to dominate, and more voters are undecided at this stage on who to vote for.

The closeness of the parties indicates that each vote and each preference for a candidate on a party list will be important. Here we look briefly at the tone of the present campaign, and then explain as clearly as we can how to cast a valid vote in the complicated voting system for the Saeima that still confuses many in the West—and many still in Latvia itself.

A poor showing by political parties

Surveys of voting intentions over the past year have consistently showed that no one party is leading in this election. The most recent survey by the Rīga-based research firm SKDS in mid-August showed five parties were likely to be represented in the Saeima (a party has to gain at least 5 percent of the vote to gain representation). These five are:

• Jaunais laiks (New Era), 12 percent
• Zaļo un Zemnieku Savienība (Union of Greens and Farmers, or ZZS), 11.2 percent
• Par cilvēku tiesībām vienotā Latvijā (For Human Rights in a United Latvia, or PCTVL), 9.3 percent
• Tautas Partija (People’s Party), 8.9 percent
• Tēvzemei un brīvībai / LNNK (For Fatherland and Freedom, or TB/LNNK), 6 percent

Three other parties have less than 5 percent, but still may be in the hunt for representation: Latvijas Sociāldemokrātiskā Strādnieku partija (Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party, or LSDSP), Latvijas Pirmā Partija (First Party of Latvia, or LPP) and Saskaņas centrs (Harmony Centre).

The most striking finding in this study, however, is that some 24 percent of voters are still undecided who to vote for, compared to 15 percent at this time before the previous Saeima elections.

All parties seem to have suffered from various political disasters, from the scandal of Jūrmalgate (which particularly affected Ainars Šlesers, the LPP transport minister forced to resign over his telephone calls on bribery of Jūrmala councilors, and Andris Šķēle, former leader of the People’s Party) to recent similar phone calls in Rēzekne implicating New Era members in an election funding scandal. Aivars Lembergs, controversial mayor of Ventspils, has been nominated by ZZS as its candidate for prime minister, but he is currently under investigation for various financial irregularities. And Einars Repše, who strongly led New Era into the last Saeima, has become clearly unpopular even with his own party members.

The prestige of politicians has not been helped by a number of controversial social issues, particularly the clear homophobia of several politicians (and the churches) in response to the gay pride movement during the past two years, and the confusion of many other politicians as to how to handle this issue. Religion is raising its head in Latvian politics in unexpected ways, creating strange alliances.

The Latvian voting system

The particular voting system used in Latvia (and many other Eastern European countries) is one that still baffles many people more used to voting systems especially in English-speaking countries or Western Europe.

In the Latvian system, you vote for a party, not for an individual candidate in a local electorate. Voters receive as many ballot papers as there are party lists (19 in the present election). Each voter then chooses one party and puts that party list in the voting envelope, which goes in the ballot box. Envelopes containing more than one ballot paper are invalid.

But you can still vote for and against a particular candidate within the party list. This is perhaps an even more confusing aspect of the Latvian sysem, and arises out of the consideration that voters may prefer a particular party, but not necessarily every individual within that party list. Basically, the overall number of votes for the party will determine how many of the party list becomes deputies, reading from the top of the list down (the order has been decided by the party submitting its list). However, voters are able to indicate their preference for candidates within that list. Voters may wish to promote particular individuals, or demote others, so they may put a plus sign (+) beside a candidate’s name, or alternatively cross out a candidate’s name. A plus sign has the effect of giving that candidate one more vote than others on the list; crossing out a name will result in one vote being taken off them relative to others. You can also deposit your ballot paper without alteration if you are happy with the candidates and their order on the list.

Why was such a sysem adopted in Latvia? As for voting for a party, not a candidate in a local electorate, its history dates back to immediate post-World War I Europe, when concern over minority groups not being represented in parliaments led to the widespread use of this system, known as proportional representation. (World War I was seen to have largely been ignited by unhappy minorites in the Balkans). In Eastern Europe and countries such as Italy that use this system, this has led to almost perpetual coalition governments because there is often no one clear-cut dominant party.

This differs from the system adopted in English-speaking countries and many western European countries where voters elect a candidate from a local geographical electorate. This system favours large parties that can win many electorates, and disadvantages smaller parties which, if they get say 10 percent of the overall vote, still may not win a single electorate. So we see such examples as the United States where it is almost impossible for a candidate not from the two major parties to gain representation in that system. In the proportional system, a party getting 10 percent of the votes gets 10 percent of the deputies in parliament. In Latvia before World War II, a party could gain representation with as little as 1 percent of the vote, but this has since been changed to avoid splintering and a party now has to reach 5 percent to get any deputies at all.

The plus and minus sysem is simple recognition that not all voters will like equally all candidates on their preferred party list. Curiously, this does have a precedent in the Soviet system of voting. In that system, of course, there was only one party and voting (like in English-speaking countries) was for candidates in local electorates. There was of course only one candidate for each electorate, from the Communist Party, but voters could cross this name out if they desired, and in a small number of cases candidates received many cross-outs. This was a warning to the party of something wrong, and the need to look at the performance of this candidate.

Most voting systems in the world do not allow crossing out of a candidate’s name. Voters in Latvia seem to take particular pleasure in this exercise of some power over the candidates their party has offered them!

With elections for the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, due this October, the first few months of 2006 have seen a stunning series of political scandals, manoeuvres and plain bloody-mindedness that have once more called into question the very basis of the Latvian political system.

Toward the end of 2005, one could have had some reason for thinking that the Latvian political party system was stabilising. With 10 months to go to the election, there seemed to be no surprise “newcomers” to the rank of political parties. For once, the elections were likely to be dominated by parties already in the Saeima. And despite seemingly endless petty friction between the coalition parties, particularly between New Era (Jaunais laiks) and Latvia’s First Party (Latvijas Pirmā partija), the coalition government of Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis seemed likely to last until the elections. Prospects such as the NATO defense alliance summit, scheduled in November in Rīga, and the International Ice Hockey Federation’s World Championship in May indicated the amount of serious work the government needed to do.

Not so. In the very last days of 2005, a scandal enveloped New Era leader and Defence Minister Einars Repše, whose financial dealings had led to investigations of possible criminal activities. He resigned from his portfolio on Dec. 22. This was swiftly followed by heightened antagonism between New Era and the Latvia’s First Party, plus increased shakiness in the coalition as accusations of political interference surrounded the investigation into Repše.

Then came a curious proposal from the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un zemnieku savienība) to disallow any political advertising for the three months prior to an election. This extraordinary proposal—a much longer period than is ever stipulated for elections in any other democratic country—perhaps not surprisingly saw strong support from several parties that had been accused in the previous elections of vastly overspending the amounts allowed by law for election campaigns. Many see this proposal as a means of eventually evading the attention of the state Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau, which has been investigating previous breaches. Another view is that this is a means of consolidating the existing parties and disallowing the emergence of any new party that relies on heavy pre-election campaigning. Interestingly, for the last Saeima elections in 2002, two new parties had campaigned heavily in the period before the election—both New Era and Latvia’s First Party. Significantly, New Era opposes the proposed restriction, but Latvia’s First Party is strongly in favour! As the proposal has endlessly been debated in the Saeima and its committees, however, a perhaps even more worrying aspect has emerged: the proposal also covers what is considered to be “hidden campaign advertising.” Any media commentary might be construed as favouring or recommending one party against another, in effect possibly limiting all political commentary and analysis.

In what is possibly to be the most significant event of 2006, in mid-March the country was rocked by the “Jūrmalgate” scandal. After the elections for the Jūrmala local government, a large sum of money (LVL 10,000) was reportedly offered to one deputy to vote in favour of a particular candidate as mayor. The delegate took the money but still voted the “wrong” way. Having received wind of this, anti-corruption bodies recorded the telephone calls by a number of those involved, including shady businessmen but also local and national politicians. Among those caught receiving phone calls on this subject and clearly agreeing to the bribe going ahead were two notables, Ainars Šlesers, the head-kicking transport minister and Latvia’s First Party icon, and Andris Šķēle, former prime minister and founder of the People’s Party (Tautas partija). While both immediately counter-attacked and declared this was a political setup by their enemies, the damage was considerable. Šlesers, still protesting his absolute innocence, was sacked by Kalvītis.

The scandal showed the cynicism of politicians dividing up power among themselves and being willing to bribe to achieve their ends. By a fluke of timing, these highly revealing events succeeded somewhat in driving into the background the usual mid-March Latvian political disaster: March 16, a day previously used as a commemoration by members of the Latvian Legion (the World War II Latvian armed forces that fought against the Soviet Union as part of Germany’s Waffen-SS, or Schutzstaffel). While the old soldiers now no longer march on this day, extremists of both the left and right still use this date as a time of flexing their muscles, always attracting international media attention that dwells on past wars and atrocities and the fist-fights of the day. On this occasion, the authorities took the unprecedented step of closing off the Freedom Monument, the traditional focus of the day, with limp and contradictory excuses about “repairs.” The participants were reduced to mild shoulder-shoving at their gathering place at the other end of the Old Town. One can only hope the international media were too bored by this occasion to ever come back.

But still worse was to come. Tensions in the government coalition continued to grow into April. One event was the extraordinarily inept handling of the distribution of European structural readjustment funds to entrepreneurs by Economics Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, the New Era Party’s No. 2. Criticism and, again, threat of criminal investigation followed. In hot reaction to this as another political setup, and to Šlesers’ involvement in Jūrmalgate, Repše engaged in serious brinkmanship by demanding that Kalvītis choose between Latvia’s First Party and New Era. When Kalvītis refused to throw Latvia’s First Party out of the coalition, Repše in a sullen performance withdrew New Era from the government (even refusing to shake Kalvītis’ hand at their crucial final meeting). While New Era was seen to be the instigator of the coalition breakdown, there was clearly anticipation of this by Kalvītis. In record speed new ministers were found to replace the New Era ministers, and a minority coalition government was shored up.

Indeed the losers so far seem to be Repše and New Era, which lost its accustomed spot as one of Latvia’s more popular political parties. April surveys showed New Era’s popularity down 4 percentage points compared to March. While I earlier commented on Repše’s more sober performance as defence minister in the latter half of 2005—a welcome change from his previous highly idiosyncratic property dealings and personal style—his highly personal and willful reaction to events this year has endangered both himself and his party. Even some party members now believe New Era could be more attractive to voters without Repše. And all bets on a stable party system are off.

It will be a rough road in the less than five months left to the election.

During 2005, there was no change of government in Latvia. Perhaps this time there should have been. It was largely successful external politics that dominated the year, but some local politics could always be relied upon to take the gloss off external achievements and reveal previously unplumbed depths in Latvian political life.

The dawning of 2005 came in new colours—the unexpected “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. Strongly supported by the Baltic states, Western Europe and the United States, Viktor Yushchenko’s turning of the tables on the corrupt, Russia-backed incumbents continued the slow overturning of such regimes that had begun in Georgia earlier in 2004 and was to be repeated—perhaps even more unexpectedly—in Kyrgyzstan in 2005.

For those who had believed that accession to the European Union and NATO in 2004 guaranteed Latvia a quiet and protected life, the year brought new challenges and, for the most part, challenges that were well responded to. Of central importance was President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga’s high-risk politics surrounding the May 9 celebrations in Moscow to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Against much advice, she decided to attend these celebrations, but used her response to the invitation to point out that the end of Nazism was followed by nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation, which also needed to be condemned. This led to several months of intense diplomatic and not-so-diplomatic rhetoric. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin reacted strongly, and when Vīķe-Freiberga gave him a copy of a recent history of Latvia, Putin used the Auschwitz memorial ceremony in January to attack those who he accused of attempting to rewrite history.

Eventually, the May 9 celebrations in Moscow were decidedly less than a triumph for Russia. The other two Baltic presidents declined to attend and received considerable publicity for that, but even greater attention was paid to Vīķe-Freiberga. U.S. President George W Bush pointedly visited Latvia just before and Georgia just after the May 9 celebrations, again bringing displeasure from Moscow as he supported the spread of democracy and implicitly pointed to the growing lack of democracy in Russia.

Other external gains can also be counted, including the European Parliament being willing to look at issues of the consequence of Soviet rule in the new EU member states. Many forces, including the EU and particularly Poland, continued pressure on Russia over its slide to authoritarianism and legal and human rights abuses, but Latvian representatives on the whole resisted criticizing Russia on all matters, stressing the need for good relations despite issues of contention, and deflecting Russia’s now flagging criticisms of Latvia’s minority politics.

Over the same period, the tortuous on-again, off-again negotiations over a border agreement with Russia ground to a halt for both Latvia and Estonia, with both Baltic countries insisting on attaching their own addenda outlining the history of past treaties with the Soviet Union and their consequences, and a subsequent refusal to accept this by Russia. While I have earlier argued that Latvia had gone about these negotiations in an often incompetent manner, it was somewhat “saved” by a similar fate befalling Estonia.

However, local politicians can always make matters worse. Aleksandrs Kiršteins, chair of the Saiema (Parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee, excited passions with a call for Russians to leave the country, adding that this exodus should be accompanied by brass bands at the railway stations. After rather prolonged pressure he resigned, widely regarded as a provocateur.

The bigger external problems, however, took a new form in 2005. Not only the Baltic states but also much of Europe are highly dependent on Russian gas and oil, and Putin has put in considerable work to woo particularly Germany and France to support Russian ambitions. A stage-managed “750 year anniversary of Kaliningrad” (that’s the old Königsberg, the city of philosopher Immanuel Kant, now a Russian oil and weapons sludgepile) saw Putin invite just two western leaders to the celebrations – France’s Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Gerhardt Schröder – as these were people who Putin said “spoke the same language” as himself! And what did they speak about? A radical plan to build a submarine gas pipeline from St. Petersburg to Germany, bypassing the Baltic states and Poland and creating potentially an environmental catastrophe in the Baltic Sea. Despite Russia’s many foreign affairs setbacks in the recent past, energy geopolitics is now the name of its game. This will be a test for Germany’s new Chancellor Angela Merkel. Latvia’s former Foreign Affairs Minister Sandra Kalniete, who had earlier made waves with her own well-reported equation of Nazism with Communism, also darkly warned that values, not trade, should underpin the European Union’s relations with Russia.

Against this external backdrop, Latvia’s awkward and often meandering coalition government of Aigars Kalvītis struggled to deal with mounting internal problems, but was saved by a booming economy. Poll ratings for all parties in the coalition were poor throughout 2005, with only New Era (Jaunais laiks) and occasionally the People’s Party (Tautas partija) scoring above the 5 percent barrier. Former Prime Minister and New Era leader Einars Repše spent the first half of the year as almost a political irrelevancy, involved in a number of strange property deals and personally distancing himself from all political engagement, even while fulfilling the role of defense minister. However, in the second half of the year his activity both as minister and politician markedly improved, and when he was faced with a serious leadership challenge during the New Era’s party congress, Repše responded with vigour but also with understanding, almost seeming to lose his former arrogance and distance. New Era has now shown itself to be more than a one-man party. (Repše stepped down as defense minister and resigned his seat in the Saeima on Dec. 22 in reaction to Kalvītis going public with news that the state anti-corruption bureau has begun a criminal investigation of Repše’s finances – ed.)

On the other side of the political fence, National Harmony Party (Tautas saskaņas partija) leader Jānis Jurkāns retired from politics, rather in despair at the prospects of his party which has begun to seriously fray, losing members to central parties on the one hand while often being sidelined by the more aggressive pro-Moscow forces on the other. Jurkāns had a long engagement with politics going back to the People’s Front (Tautas fronte) days of the late 1980s. He was foreign minister in the Ivars Godmanis government (1990-1993) when Latvia regained its independence, but then split from many of his People’s Front colleagues. The National Harmony Party was variously seen as left-wing and appealing only to the province of Latgale and Russian-oriented interests, but Jurkāns saw it as an alternative both to the nationalists and to the hard-line ex-Communist diehards.

Meanwhile, in the Saeima the quality of political life continued to be eroded with several measures that further alienated the public. Using a variety of hypocritical arguments and parliamentary obstruction tactics, Saeima deputies twice defeated a proposal to remove deputies’ immunity to administrative law prosecution – that is, legal cases that might arise from administrative abuses of their position, related business dealings, etc. And as if to rub in this immunity, in the most vicious display of self-interest a majority of deputies backed sudden, unexpected and unexplained turnarounds in gambling laws that overturned previous restrictions on expansion of gambling facilities, a clear case of cui bono—who benefits?

But finally, one totally unexpected issue has left a cloud over the year in Latvian politics and makes us question much of the apparent gains made over recent times. Latvia’s inaugural “Rīga Pride” gay and lesbian march took place on July 23, leading to a sequence of events still reverberating. In the old Soviet system gay culture was even more underground than it had been in the West. Now, 15 years after Latvia regained its independence, you could think that gay culture would have found its largely uncontroversial niche as it has elsewhere. Not so. The march caused a storm even before the event, with raging controversy in the Rīga City Council over permission for the march and finally a court case determining it could proceed. On the day, marchers were harassed and in some cases physically attacked by a set of opponents forming a momentary but bizarre coalition – neo-Nazis, National Bolsheviks, virtually all major religious bodies and right-wing family-first groups. Controversy continued to rage afterwards, resulting in further strange alliances, for example Russian Ambassador Viktor Kalyuzhny praising Latvia’s Catholic Cardinal Jānis Pujats for condemning the march. In late November, Riga’s Lutheran Archbishop expelled the dean of the University of Latvia’s theology faculty, Juris Cālītis, from the Lutheran church for participating in a gay church service and supporting gay culture, the archbishop’s representative colourfully equating homosexuality with Satanism.

Readers may well understand how marginal much organised religion is in present-day Latvia. But this opportunity to attack a perceived threat and raise social passions was not scorned by prominent mainstream politicians, particularly the plutocratic and populist Transport Minister Ainars Šlesers, who criticised the court for allowing the march and mounted a campaign in the Saeima to amend Latvia’s constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a women. Almost unbelievably, on Dec. 1 the Saeima passed this proposal, the first move in securing a constitutional amendment, doing it in such a bloody minded and hyped-up environment that only three deputies voted against the proposal, and not one deputy daring to speak against it. While such actions have been strongly criticised by much popular response in Latvia itself, and almost universally condemned by contributors to public debate from outside Latvia, they nevertheless also aroused strong anti-gay sentiments from many within Latvia.

No other incident so clearly revealed the political opportunism and cynicism that characterises Latvian politics. But it also revealed the enormous well of homophobia that still exists in significant sections of Latvian society. While certainly not wanting to underestimate homophobia in western societies, the scale and nature of this issue in Latvia shows the still yawning chasm that exists between the very damaged society in Latvia and the Europe it aspires to be part of. In other circumstances we could fear that such an incident could lead to Latvia becoming the laughing stock of Europe, but on this occasion it is likely that Europe will not be laughing.