The appointment March 3 of new Ombudsman Juris Jansons showed the extreme political difficulties faced by the government of Prime Minister Dombrovskis, and gives ominous signs of continuing political corruption in Latvia.

In this unsavoury incident, Dombrovskis’ coalition partner—the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība, or ZZS)—refused to come to an agreement on which candidate to put forward, and supported Jansons, who had been nominated as a candidate by the Russian-oriented Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs). 

In an exchange of accusations, Dombrovskis warned that by supporting this candidate ZZS was threatening to destabilise the coalition, and was going against the spirit and letter of the formal written coalition agreement. ZZS’s leader, the highly manipulative former apparatchik Augusts Brigmanis, countered by saying this did not go against the agreement at all and demanded an apology from Dombrovskis for suggesting destabilisation. Moreover, he argued that ZZS had supported Jansons when the prime minister’s party, Unity (Vienotība), had dawdled in presenting its own candidate.

This issue had been going on for several months, with a previous candidate of Unity being blackballed by ZZS in earlier discussions. In the end Unity did select another candidate, Anita Kovaļevska, a judge in the Administrative Court with a strong academic and judicial background in human rights, who was strongly supported by several non-government organisations and convincingly won a phone-in vote in a televised debate with her opponent.

Jansons, also a lawyer, has worked in mostly judicial-administrative and financial areas, and after his election said he was desiring to consult with Kovaļevska with her expertise on human rights. More tellingly, he also said that he would work to make the future selection process for the ombudsman more “democratic and publicly understandable”!

Secret ballots, transparent manipulations

This appointment and its machinations raises a number of issues. First, to vote on the candidates the Saeima again engaged in that most unusual of parliamentary practices: a secret ballot. Never used in most parliamenatry systems, the secret ballot showed its ability to hide corrupt practices in April last year with the appointment of a new chief prosecutor, when incumbent Juris Maizītis was not re-elected though all parties had publicly supported him and not a single speech was made in the Saeima against his candidature.

Jansons was elected 53-40, but at least this time all parties had openly declared their support for the various candidates (so the result was not the shock it was in Maizitis’ case). Moreover, there was debate in the Saeima on the relative merits of the candidates. For those supporting Kovaļevska, the emphasis was on her judicial and academic background and expertise in human rights. Those supporting Jansons argued that administrative expertise, not human rights expertise, was more important in this position.

One other argument emerged for Jansons. The odious oligarch Ainars Šlesers reached the nadir of debate when he argued that he would favour Jansons as he openly supported “family values,” the usual code for politicians employing conservative moral and religious values to mask their actual view of politics as lucrative business and promoting one’s own. Suitability for the job was never a highly ranked criterion for those like Šlesers in the hypocritically named For a Good Latvia! (Par labu Latviju!), which sided with ZZS and Harmony Centre to push their candidate through.

Second, these proceedings give us an insight into the political lie of the land in the parliament, and particularly the central place that ZZS now occupies. The great strength of ZZS is not just its own 22 seats in the 100-member Saeima, but in its strategic position to be able to go with either Unity (33 seats) or Harmony Centre (29 seats) to form a majority. Formally in coalition with Unity, the Jansons episode, like the Maizītis episode where ZZS was clearly the force that stopped his appointment, shows it cares little for coalition niceties when it seeks to assert its influence. A strong ombudsman is not in ZZS interests. In recent months there have been a series of appointments to various government boards and institutions with ZZS people well represented, but the appointments have come often with little transparency.

In other ways, however, ZZS at the moment seems to have no thought of abandoning the coalition. It is aware that its own party and membership would be solidly against going into coalition with SC, and currently ZZS has the best of all possible worlds—being in a coaliton, so contributing to overall policy and governance through its ministers and appointments, but also able to play the field, picking and chosing issues on which to diverge from its coalition partner, and always reminding Dombrovskis of his limited capacity to determine policy. The presidential elections due mid-year may be the next time for ZZS to move in this fashion.

An ombudsman in difficult times

Finally, spare a thought for the ombudsman, or tiesībsargs. This position has only been established for three years, and the process of finding a candidate led to a prolonged standoff. Finally Judge Romāns Apsītis, a reluctant candidate from Day 1, was elected as a compromise candidate. He did not vie for re-election, and rated his own work in the office as middling. As is custom, the ombudsman only has powers to recommend, and the frustration Apsītis felt in battling the bureaucracy was evident. Each of the years of his office has seen a decline in the numbers of people seeking its help, a problem that Jansons promised to address.

However, this is not to give up hope for Jansons. In recent years several appointments that were seen as politically favouring lesser qualified candidates have turned to bite those who appointed them and believed they could be kept on a leash.

Aleksejs Loskutovs, former director of the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (Korupcijas novēršanas un apkarošanas birojs) is one such example. He became a popular hero when the government attempted to sack him in 2007.

President Valdis Zatlers, elected by the Saeima in 2007, was widely seen as a lap dog for the then government but has also shown far greater independence than what his appointers had hoped. We shall watch with interest how candidates are found for the presidency.

The more sordid side of Latvian politics has been well shown in recent weeks with a bizarre robbery at a small provincial casino, stopped by police after a shoot-out in which one officer died, only to find out that among the apprehended robbers were—policemen!

Meanwhile, at another level, there has been growing unease about the over-exploitation of Latvian forests, an issue now gaining some unusual international attention.

Cops and robbers: Which is which?

The armed robbery took place Jan. 25 at the Fēnikss casino in Jēkabpils. During the hold-up, casino staff alerted authorities through a silent alarm. The local police arrived quickly to chase the robbers, ending up in a shoot-out after the robbers’ car was trapped in a cul-de-sac. In the shoot-out one Jēkabpils policeman was killed, and three of the robbers and two local policemen wounded. When the identities of the robbers were discovered, most of them were found to be former or current policemen, and two of them belong to the special police tactical response group Alfa, some of whose other members had also previously been involved in criminal activity.

This shocking incident reveals some of the long-suspected links between members of the police and organised crime. It also gives a very good introduction to the phenomenon of money laundering, and to the confusion over responsibilities for the supervision of police and related justice proceedings.

The incident had a number of extraordinary features. First, the stolen sum—reported by the casion owners as LVL 104,500, but later found by the police to be nearly LVL 400,000— is a huge sum for a small provincial gaming room, where daily takings would average around LVL 1,000.

Second, the robbery on a day when this large sum of money was at the casino (and had not been put in a nearby bank) attests to inside information at work. Who was in collusion with whom?

Third, and perhaps most unusual, the robbers seemed careless in their approach, as if they were surprised the local police would follow. They did not have a clearly learned escape route. And, curiously for such well-trained security people, they lost in a shoot-out with lightly armed local police, albeit killing one of their number.

The incident has created a political storm, and renewed attention to flaws in the legal system.

The large sum involved would indicate serious money laundering. A typical “story” to explain this huge sum in such a casino is that an (unknown) passing Russian millionaire appeared, gambled with the money and lost, and disappeared again. After paying the regular amount of tax (a stupendously low 15 percent in Latvia’s still unbalanced taxation system), the casino owners can keep the remainder as legitimate income. The illegal money to be laundered may come from the still thriving black market in cigarettes, alcohol and other contraband goods in Latvia, or from even further afield.

There is now serious concern over the continued viability of Alfa as an operational unit. This comes after other highly criticised actions of Alfa, notably last year a physical attack on peaceful and mostly elderly protesters in Bauska opposing the closing of the local hospital. The Jēkabpils incident on top of this and other sometimes criminal activity of Alfa operatives have now raised calls for the Interior Minister Linda Mūrniece to resign.

As a coda, the subsequent trial process has caused extra concern. National television showed the accused being convoyed to the place of trial, escorted by masked security personnel, with the accused also having a mask over their eyes, as well as being manacled in such a fashion that they needed to walk stooped, and be bodily hauled up stairs. Having their own clothes taken away for forensic examination, the accused were issued by prison personnel with ill-fitting garments several sizes too large, further inhibiting movement. These manacled and manhandled accused became an item of interest to the State Ombudsman, who wrote to the police asking if this treatment of the accused was not demeaning and against their human rights. Unfortunately, one other grotesque aspect of police operations in Latvia is the unnecessary use of force or intimidation in many aspects of their work.

This incident is likely to have far-reaching consequences for police operations and investigation of criminal activites. Yet in the past there has been little political will to tackle corruption in the police force and uncover money laundering, with poor supervision and loopholes in laws allowing such continued criminality.

Latvia’s pulp fiction and Al Jazeera

Latvia’s environmental problems and the uneasy relation between business and politics has been highlighted internationally by an unlikely source. On Feb. 2 well-known Middle East news channel Al Jazeera in its English language edition presented a documentary on the mismanagement of Latvian forestry and the rapacious growth of its uncontrolled forestry industry.

Over the last year, according to the documentary, Latvian timber exports have grown by a staggering 53 percent, with some 150 logging teams cutting some 15 million cubic meters of timber a year, twice the legal limit set by the government in its forest management policy. Large areas are being clear-felled, and the cutting is proceeding at twice the rate of any replanting, raising serious concerns about the viability of Latvia’s most precious natural resource.

Entitled “Latvia’s Pulp Fiction,” the documentary showed that the state-owned Latvian timber corporation Latvijas valsts meži (LVM) representatives and government officials claimed this growth of logging was a temporary measure, aimed at providing employment during the current economic crisis. Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis in the same documentary defended the government policy.

Another scandal revealed in the documentary concerned the false use by LVM of certificates issued by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international nongovernmental organisation that certifies timber is being sustainably produced. FSC stopped issuing certificates to LVM last year after an investigation found that the rate of logging was not sustainable. Despite this, buyers were still being told all timber was FSC approved.

After the screening of the documentary, the FSC released a statement saying that “it would now like to point out that the Latvian state-owned timber company or LVM have no FSC certificates issued to them that allow them to claim that their forests are either FSC certified in full or are covered by a controlled wood forest management certificate.”

Latvia’s forests are a precious national asset, and the operations of the loggers are now too blatant to not be recognised by any resident who takes an afternoon drive from any Latvian city. Again, the question of political will is paramount: illegal logging has been rife in many countries, but in Latvia it is being pursued by a state-owned corporation, obviously with powerful political support. This strikes at the root of the nation’s continuing sustainability.

The year 2011 in Latvian politics begins with more hope but also more intrigue than the gloomy situation of 12 months ago. The Saeima elections in October signalled significant changes in Latvia’s political architecture, against the background of Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis’ continued and doggedly determined course of paying off debts and bringing Latvia’s economy back to growth.

The realignment of political parties was a major feature of 2010.

A year ago, the coalition led by Dombrovksis suffered repeated bouts of destabilisation. When the formerly leading People’s Party (Tautas partija) left the coalition in March, it left Dombrovskis with a minority government, but interestingly one that had relatively little trouble surviving until October.

Instead of helping its public profile, the move resulted in the People’s Party desperately fighting for its survival. The party continued to plummet in the polls and eventually needed to seek an alliance with Ainārs Šlesers’ First Party of Latvia (Latvijas Pirmā partija) to be able to guarantee even reaching the 5 percent of votes required to gain representation in the Saeima. Their new creation, the hypocritically named For a Good Latvia! (Par labu Latviju!) just managed to scrape back at the elections, a humiliating comedown for these parties which before the election controlled one-third of all deputies.

Such a consolidation of parties was also achieved elsewhere. In March the three groupings closest to Dombrovskis’ government joined forces to form Unity (Vienotība). This was a combination of New Era (Jaunais laiks), its breakaway Citizens’ Union (Pilsoniskā savienība), and the Society for A Different Politics (Sabiedrība citai politikai)—itself a breakaway from the People’s Party.

Not to be outdone, the nationalist party For Fatherland and Freedom (Tēvzemei un brīvībai / LNNK) found itself also slipping in the polls, and joined an alliance with the newer, much brasher and more strident All for Latvia! (Visu Latvijai!) to form the National Alliance (Nacionālā apvienība).

A second major theme for 2010 was the continued rise of the Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs).

This party, heavily backed by Latvia’s Russian voters, had significant success as the largest party in the 2009 Rīga municipal elections, where its leader Nīls Ušakovs was installed as mayor. In the ratings throughout 2010, Harmony Centre almost always came in as the largest party, usually leading its nearest rival Unity by several crucial percentage points. This pointed to the distinct possibility of Harmony Centre being the largest party in the Saeima, which rang alarm bells through the much more fragmented Latvian parties.

The surprise election result

Yet the election of Oct. 2 did not bring a Harmony Centre victory. Instead, Unity managed to mobilise voters and scored a narrow but significant victory. In the 100-seat Saeima, Unity now controls 33 seats; Harmony Centre, 29; the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība), 22; the National Association, 8; and For a Good Latvia!, 8.

As another significant outcome, the long-established and much-hated Soviet imperialist party For Human Rights in a United Latvia (Par cilvēku tiesībām vienotā Latvijā) gained only 1.4 percent of the vote and failed for the first time to get representation in the Saeima.

With this result Dombrovskis was asked once more to form a coalition government, only the second time in Latvian history that an outgoing prime minister before a Saeima election is also the prime minister after that election. Yet the process was not easy.

An intriguing period ensued with Dombrovskis asking Harmony Centre to consider joining a coalition, a move that surprised even many in his own party. However, the offer came with strings attached: Dombrovskis wanted to have Harmony Centre take an unequivocal stand on some key issues, including recognising as a fact Latvia’s occupation under Soviet rule, and other points of Latvian-Russian disagreement where it had often showed itself to be equivocal. Angered by such demands to make these ideological commitments, Harmony Centre declined to join the coalition. For some, this was a chance gone begging, the chance to have a coalition that combined the leading Latvian- and Russian-oriented parties that would take responsibility for the difficult economic decisions that lay ahead; for others, this was seen as averting a dangerous move to bring people of dubious loyalty into the government.

For Fatherland and Freedom had also been a member of Dombrovskis’ outgoing coalition government, but its alliance with the more radical All for Latvia! was seen as taking the government potentially too far to the right, so it also was not taken on board. Instead, Unity finally formed a coalition with the other significant winner in the elections, the Union of Greens and Farmers, which had increased its representation in the parliament from 19 to 22 seats, and which had always played the quieter partner role in the coalitions before. It is now this two-party coalition with 55 Saeima deputies that forms government.

The bitterness of the defeat for the For a Good Latvia! party has caused it to become extremely active in the opposition. The first destabilisation effort was made in November with an attempt to unseat Foreign Minister Ģirts Valdis Kristovskis. We are likely to see more such destabilisation attempts in 2011 as the opposition targets ministers one by one.

Under Dombrovskis, the first signs of Latvia’s economic recovery are apparent, with encouraging export performance and achieved revenue targets. However, the demands of the International Monetary Fund and other creditors for structural reforms and cutting of budgets means that we will continue to see internal deflation. Living standards will continue to drop. However, they are expected to reach their nadir in 2011, with a rise in economic growth expected from mid-2011. The election result has been widely seen as confirming that Latvian voters are willing to put up with this policy line for the sake of long-term improvement.

Foreign affairs

In terms of foreign relations, 2010 also brought some significant advances, with President Valdis Zatlers’ long-delayed visit to Moscow bringing some immediate gains. The endless lines of trucks at some border crossings into Russia began to be processed more quickly. More broadly, however, the visit was marked by a neutral and business-like tone, with Russia not pressing its traditional hectoring demands on citizenship and language issues.

One aspect of foreign policy became known to the general public in December through WikiLeaks: a cable confirmed that the NATO defense alliance had laid down contingency plans for action in the case of the Baltic states being attacked. These are contingency plans that the Baltics had long asked for, but which NATO previously had never formulated. More publicly in May, in a significant win for Latvia, the European Court of Human Rights upheld Latvia’s right to try former Soviet partisan and self-proclaimed anti-fascist fighter Vassily Kononov for war crimes in 1944, when he had supervised the execution of nine civilians in a small Latvian village.

* * *

Several years of still painful economic rectification lie ahead for Latvia, but the first signs at least are that the government continues to enjoy support, and that it can fight off attempts to destabilise it. 2010 will be seen as a turning point in Latvian politics.