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.

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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.

Despite predictions of a possible victory in the Latvian parliamentary elections by the Russian-leaning Harmony Centre (Saskaņas Centrs), the Oct. 2 election was won by the centre-right Unity (Vienotība), the party of Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis.

The pre-election period had witnessed a rather pessimistic and even alarmed atmosphere around Unity, which had trailed in the polls for most of the year. There was concern that particularly among Latvian voters a sense of alienation from the political process could mean that too few would even cast ballots, leaving the gate open for Harmony Centre to be the largest party. In the end, Latvians did turn up to vote.

Another concern had been the very strong publicity campaign run by the “new” party For a Good Latvia! (Par labu Latviju!, or PLL). PLL is in fact the remnant of the two previous dominant parties in the Saeima—the People’s Party (Tautas partija ) and the First Party of Latvia (Latvijas Pirmā  partija)—which constituted the core of the previous disgraced government that had presided over Latvia’s economic disaster in 2008 as well as numerous other policy blunders.

PLL ran its campaign highlighting the strong economic growth during the earlier years of its government (don’t mention the crisis!), and berating the Dombrovskis-led government for its harsh economic measures. Its two leaders, Rīga Vice Mayor Ainars Šlesers and former Prime Minister Andris Šķēle, had their portraits plastered everywhere and had considerable resources to try to persuade the public to vote for them again.

In the elections, however, the PLL was only able to win eight seats, and did no better than the nationalist bloc (Visu Latvijai! – Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK) that ran its campaign on a shoestring. Another casualty of the elections was the former Soviet imperialist party For Human Rights in a United Latvia (Par cilvēku tiesībām vienotā Latvijā), whose opposition to Latvia’s independence and pro-European orientation has now run its course. PCTVL received only 1.9 percent of the vote (parties must gain 5 percent to get any Saeima seats).

Getting and not getting a coalition

As with all previous Latvian elections, no party gained a clear majority in its own right, so the process of forming a coalition began immediately. PLL had declared it would be in opposition, but all other parties declared themselves ready to be in a coalition government. Yet the coalition process was complicated in that each of the blocs elected to the Saeima is in fact itself a coalition of different parties or groupings. For example, Unity consists of the older New Era (Jaunais laiks), the breakaway Civic Union (Pilsoniskā savienība) with a very Latvian national-oriented focus, and the Society for a Different Politics (Sabiedrība citai politikai), a professional politician party largely of renegades from the failed People’s Party. And it was these internal divisions that partly determined the coalition outcome.

First, Dombrovskis, who was widely seen to return as prime minister, went for a “grand coalition,” inviting the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība), the nationalist bloc and Harmony Centre to join in government, which would be backed by 92 deputies in the Saeima.

This was a startling move. The nationalist bloc and Harmony Centre are sworn enemies and it would seem to be fantasy for them to sit side by side in a government. Yet Dombrovksis’ move had a logic and he made certain demands that the parties would have to meet. He desired to see if Harmony Centre, with its strong voter base, was willing to join in a coalition, thus not denying a significant part of the electorate a chance to be represented in a government, rather than being asssigned to a perpetual opposition, always seen in ethnic conflict terms. It would also hopefully lessen the continual pressure that comes from Russia to recognise the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia as a legitimate political force.

But Dombrovskis laid down conditions: Harmony Centre had to accept certain positions, including recogniton of the fact of Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Harmony Cente was insulted by such a demand (its leaders have always fudged the issues of history and often continued the myth of Latvia’s voluntarily joining the Soviet Union), and demanded that talk about coalition proceed without preconditions, which Dombrovskis did not accept. Meanwhile, the Civic Union faction in Unity was offended by the offer to have the Harmony Centre join a coalition, and threatened to leave Unity if this occurred.

In the end, Harmony Centre decided it could not accept Dombrovskis’ position and declined to join the coalition under the stipulated terms.

The nationalist bloc also was willing to join the coalition (it was indeed in the government coalition leading up to the elections), yet it is a party mired in some controversy. The most active part of the bloc is the relatively newly formed All for Latvia! (Visu Latvijai!), a strident nationalist faction that used the Internet and modern media to get its message across. The All for Latvia! faction has been criticised in the West as well as in Russia for its nationalist tendencies and somewhat obscure alleged links to Nazi collaborators. Dombrovskis demanded that it give up its most radical demands (for example, having all secondary schools teach in Latvian only, as opposed to the present situation where up to 40 percent could be taught in the students’ mother tongue). The nationalist bloc agreed that this and other more radical policies would only be pursued if there was agreement in the coalition to do so. But this was not good enough for the small Society for a Different Politics, which dramatically used its veto power to prevent the nationalists from being accepted into the coalition. (An earlier agreement among the three factions of Unity was that any faction would have veto rights over selection of coalition partners.) Yet this act also pointed to potential instability within the ruling party.

These wrangles over the coalition have been variously interpreted. For some, the very move of inviting Harmony Centre to join the coalition was seen as a betrayal of Unity ideals. Others saw it as the best way of handling Latvia’s large minority. And the banning of the nationalist bloc showed even more clearly the tension within Unity. On the other hand, Dombrovksis’ move to invite these two may have in a way cleared the decks, with Harmony Centre in particular being forced to show its true colours when asked crucial questions of its historical undertanding.

In the end, Unity joined with the Union of Greens and Farmers—another party that gained much in the election, and a key party in any coalition arrangements—to form a government, which was ratified by the Saeima on Nov. 3. The soft-spoken but clearly politically astute Dombrovskis was reappointed as prime minister. Having Latvians vote for him, knowing that economic austerity would continue, and sidelining the failed old guard, was a considerable achievement.

The upcoming Saeima election on Oct. 2 could be the most decisive in Latvia‘s history. For the first time there is a serious possibility that decidedly pro-Moscow parties could win a parliamentary election and be in the government. Other countries—Russia, in Europe, the United States—will be watching the results with far greater interest than in any previous election.

Yet it would be hard to come to such a conclusion if all we had to go on was the spluttering, relatively uneventful and characterless election campaign.

Some parties have made attempts to publicise themselves, most notably head-kicker Ainārs Šlesers, of the For a Good Latvia party (Par labu Latviju!, or PLL). Šlesers, a millionaire, is a former transportation minister. His portraits are on giant billboards all over the country.

For the most part it has been a woefully uninformative and featureless campaign. Unity (Vienotība), whose Valdis Dombrovskis is prime minister, has had trouble making a real impact. The party’s one campaign move was a rather populist call for people to respond to an online survey about who they think would be the better choice for prime minister in the next government: Dombrovskis or Jānis Urbanovičs, the leader of the pro-Moscow Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs). The survey possibly did as much to publicise Harmony Centre as it did Unity.

The Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība) has played dead, assured of a place in the new Saeima, but cynically biding its time to see who it will join in a coalition. As a mark of the party’s democratic credentials, its leader Augusts Brigmanis recently questioned why it was worthwhile having parties publish an official short policy outline that is accessible to all voters in polling stations, as all these policies look so similar and give voters little reason to choose between parties. For Brigmanis, only what goes on in the corridors of government once portfolios have been decided is of any worth.

The nationalist alliance of For Fatherland and Freedom (Tēvzemei un brīvībai / LNNK, or TB/LNNK) and All for Latvia! (Visu Latvijai!) has been active, staging countless demonstrations and meetings and running a very lively and aggressive Internet campaign. Given little chance of early success, as TB/LNNK has been heavily compromised by being part of the former coalition government that took Latvia into financial meltdown, this alliance is now regarded as having a good chance of being in the Saeima, thanks to its activist partner, All for Latvia!.

Significantly, ratings leader Harmony Centre is playing it quiet, trying not to scare the horses and playing down any radical ambitions, riding on its success in the Rīga local government elections of last year. But leader Urbanovičs has in numerous interviews hinted heavily at his party’s ultimate aims—citizenship for all non-citizens and raising the status of the Russian language.

This is what is at stake.

Return of the guilty

Apart from the ambitions of Harmony Centre, the campaign has also seen the strenuous attempts by those responsible for Latvia’s financial mess to return to power, ignoring their own role in the debacle and laying all the blame for Latvia’s woes on the present government’s kowtowing to the International Monetary Fund, which has bailed Latvia out of impending bankruptcy.

The PLL consists of the two leading parties in the former coalition government of ill-remembered Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis. For those such as Šlesers, the campaign has only one purpose: not to debate policy on the economy, or national security, or any other issues that may be important, but simply by whatever publicity means and whatever criticism of current policy to get enough people to vote for them to get back to a say in government. PLL’s decided leaning toward a Russia-oriented economy and foreign policy, and its coalition with Harmony Centre on the Rīga City Council, present a standing danger to Latvia’s interest in being a western-oriented country as a member of the European Union and the NATO defense alliance.

In current ratings, Harmony Centre is just a few points ahead of Unity, with ZZS trailing but assured of a place in the Saeima, followed by PLL with a similar likelihood of being elected. In Latvia’s proportional representation system, where a party much achieve 5 percent of the vote to gain any seats in the Saeima, the nationalist TB/LNNK-Visu Latvijai! alliance now seems sure of crossing that threshold and some surveys indicate it may do quite well. The welcome news around the 5 percent issue is that the long-standing Soviet remnant party For Human Rights in a United Latvia (Par cilvēku tiesībām vienotā Latvijā, or PCTVL), may struggle to reach 5 percent, though this party has been written off before.

Getting out the vote

A major factor in the election will be voter turnout. And here some important factors come into play.

Surveys have shown that the greatest number of those undecided on which party to vote for, or whether to vote at all, are ethnic Latvians. Russian voters are far less likely to be undecided and their support for Harmony Centre (and partially for PCTVL) is apparent.

In a historically familiar pattern, Latvian parties are highly fragmented even if they seem to espouse similar policies (they are of course largely not really parties, but simply vehicles for their leaders’ ambitions). If a substantial part of this undecided group does nevertheless vote, and votes for the Latvian parties, it may be possible to keep PCTVL below the 5 percent barrier and ensure more support for Unity and the other Latvian parties.

For the first time, the vote of those outside Latvia also may be important. While traditionally those citizens outside Latvia have had low participation rates (particularly the older post-war diaspora), there are numerous Latvians who have more recently come to other countries to work and who may have critical views on Latvia’s economic crisis and the reasons for it. If they vote—rather than shrugging off elections in a country that in many cases they feel they have been forced to leave—their vote may well have an impact.

In this election the overriding issue must be to maintain Latvia’s western orientation and support for Latvian cultural values, particularly language. While Unity may have been lacklustre in the campaign, its ability to take on government during the most difficult phase for Latvia is now bearing fruit as Latvia’s economy is edging significantly closer to recovery. Unity’s concern with corruption and with effective bureaucracy is also a plus. Everything depends on whether this message can get across the barrage of criticism and hypocritical posturing of those who are most responsible for leading Latvia into its financial crisis.