With less than two months before the Oct. 2 Saeima election, Latvian politics is emerging from the respite of a warm summer. All lists of party candidates have now been finalised and some clear battle lines for the election have been drawn.

This election will be unusually decisive in Latvian politics, for two reasons. First, we have the strong showing of the Russia-leaning Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs), which is the ruling party in Rīga now and which threatens to dominate in the new Saeima, potentially for the first time bringing a basically non-Latvian party into government. The strength of this party, which has led all opinion polls for several months, is the newest element in the political mix that has also brought about realignments in other parties.

Secondly, the poor fortunes of two previously leading parties—the People’s Party (Tautas partija) and the First Party of Latvia (Latvijas Pirmā partija), widely seen as responsible for the economic mismanagement that led the country to its present financial woes—have brought them together in a new formation, For a Good Latvia! (Par Labu Latviju!, or PLL), in a desperate attempt to survive with any deputies at all in the next Saeima.

This alliance also reflects a wider move to forming alliances among Latvian parties. Three centre-right parties have joined together to form Unity (Vienotība), whose Valdis Dombrovskis is the current prime minister. The two nationalist parties, the veteran For Fatherland and Freedom (Tevzemei un Brīvībai / LNNK) and the very active new radical right party All for Latvia (Visu Latvijai), have also formed an alliance.

Traditionally, Latvian parties have always split and fragmented among themselves, but some of these alliances and reformulations bring new calculations.

Most significant is the need to form the PLL alliance. It is significant in that this is an alliance of two leading oligarchs—Ainārs Šlesers and Andris Šķēle—implicated completely in Latvia’s economic decline, but now artfully trying to hoodwink the public into believing that they are the solution, not the problem. They have formed an alliance publicised as AŠ², which has however been widely parodied and ridiculed. The alliance is determined to wrest power back from its reviled Vienotība. To regain power, the alliance is happy to think of a coalition with Harmony Centre. The alliance is also best chums with the quietest party in Latvian politics at the moment, the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība, or ZZS), whose butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth stance disguises its close allegiance to Latvia’s other significant oligarch, Ventspils mayor Aivars Lembergs, and seeming willingness to be in coalition with anyone.

All these parties would love to get the upper hand over Vienotība, which despite its own political problems has been the most outspoken against corruption and favouring of oligarch interests. Yet with the radical shifts of party fortunes, particuarly PLL, pre-election calculations are still quite uncertian.

July polling results

Just how difficult it is to gauge the likely outcome is shown in a recent poll giving the July party ratings. A rather bold headline in the Aug. 7 edition of Diena announced it is likely that six parties will gain seats in the Saeima, headed by Harmony Centre with a whopping 30.2 percent of the vote. It was followed at some distance by the alliance Vienotība with 22.1 percent, the Green and Farmers at 20.1 percent, with a gap to the nationalist alliance All for Latvia and For Fatherland and Freedom at 7.1 percent. Two parties just scraped by with 6 percent of the vote: the PLL alliance and the Soviet remnant For Human Rights in a United Latvia (Par cilvēka tiesībām vienotā Latvijā, or PCTVL).

This would seem to signal triumph for Harmony Centre, and an easy coalition with their mates in PLL and ZZS at least. But looking more closely at the figures, we see some of Latvia’s political peculiarity. In actual voter responses, some 40 percent of those surveyed in this poll did not express a preference (21.5 percent of respondents said they had not made up their mind, while 18.5 percent announced they would not participate in the elections at all). Actual votes showed Harmony Centre at 18.1 percent, while PLL was at 3.8 percent and PCTVL at 3.6 percent, below the 5 percent necessary to get into the Saeima.

The figures above were got by extrapolating that all those undecided would split proportionally to those already decided. Yet other research has shown that there is a far greater number of those “undecided” among the Latvian electorate than the Russian. Those committed to Harmony Centre and PCTVL are more firmly established in their preferences. Just how the swinging Latvian voters will split between the various parties is anyone’s guess—the campaign still matters.

An opinion among many commenators has been that the forces behind the previous failed government that brought Latvia to the brink of financial crisis—particularly in the PLL alliance—will once again use their considerable publicity machinery to run a saturation campaign just before the elections, as they so successfully did in 2006.

Perhaps to forestall this, Vienotība, a party considered rather naïve in political tactics, took an initiative that promises some significant returns, but also brings its own dangers. It has launched a public campaign for voters to say who they would rather have as prime minister, Dombrovskis or Harmony Centre candidate Jānis Urbanovičs. This is a direct play on fears that the Russian-oriented Harmony Centre will become the biggest party in the new Saeima, and a call for Latvian voters to rally. Urbanovičs has become an odious figure in Latvian politics, with repeated pro-Russian and anti-Latvia statements, urging Latvia to assume pro-Moscow stances in trade and international affairs, and taking some of his opponents to court for suggesting he is anti-Latvia. No doubt the fear of this party coming to power has influenced Vienotība in this action, but it has also perhaps given Urbanovičs a deal of publicity he may otherwise not have got.

Understandably, other parties see this as an entirely presumptive move, as they also have candidates for prime minister, and in a politics of coalitions no candidate can presently be certain of office. Most ominously, however, PLL has not yet nominated a prime ministerial candidate. In a typical head-kicking statement, joint PLL leader Šlesers dismissed Vienotība’s survey as an indulgence, for on Aug. 12 PLL will announce who will be Latvia’s next prime minister! He announced a massive campaign would bring success to his alliance at the elections.

This brings us to an exquisite moment in politics. At present, the Saeima as constituted with a large PLL contingent has been quite capable of undermining Dombrovskis’ government, for example, by scandalously not reappointing Chief Prosecutor Jānis Maizītis, or delaying other needed legislation. But on Oct, 2, this same PLL will be fighting for its very existence as a parliamentary presence. If PLL does get in, has it already made a behind-the-scenes deal concerning the next goverment? The next two months will be exceedingly intense.

With the Saeima election still some five months away, the jockeying for position among Latvia’s political parties is heating up. This comes in the farcical context where several major parties that hate the Valdis Dombrovskis-led minority government and who could throw it out—but who do not want the responsibility of governing themselves—constantly try to weaken it to boost their own electoral chances.

The concern is that the forces that led Latvia into its present plight are resolutely determined that their self-made disaster should not stop their holding on to power. Alliances are forming as previously discredited parties try to grapple with the relative popularity of the present minority government leaders—the Unity (Vienotība) coalition—and Dombrovskis continues to enjoy public trust.

AŠ² is the new brand for two politicans whose initials coincide.

Andris Šķēle is founder of the People’s Party (Tautas partija) and is an influential businessman who is widely described as an oligarch. He has twice served as prime minister. He returned to politics early this year when his party was hitting rock bottom in the polls, marooned on around 2 percent of the vote. His return to politics has not helped the party in the polls at all, so an alliance has been formed with the other AŠ, Ainārs Šlesers.

Šlesers is leader of the First Party of Latvia (Latvijas Pirmā partija, or LPP) and vice mayor of Rīga, long one of the hardest and most disreputable politicians in Latvia. He is author of the “pedal to the floor” (“gāze grīdā”) ecoonomic policy of growth at all costs, which for several years saw strong gains but came to a catastrophic end with the global financial crisis. As the previous minister for transport, Šlesers left behind a litany of expensive major projects with money missing and charges of corruption. Undeterred, Šlesers continues to promote himself as a “doer,” and his ceaseless political manipulations are aimed clearly at gaining the prime ministership.

Despite Šlesers’ own personal and party success in Rīga, in the national polls LPP is also under the 5 percent barrier, so its coming together with the People’s Party makes sense. As the People’s Party has now formally left the coaltion government, while hypocritically promising to do nothing to undermine it, the two parties are free to develop their strategy and will start in coalition in the elections.

AŠ², like several other parties, is developing a close relationship with the Moscow-oriented Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs, or SC), which currently holds the mayorship of Rīga through the popular Nils Ušakovs. Harmony Centre is vying for leadership in the national polls with around 16 percent of the vote, about the same as Vienotība.

Also keen to be friendly to SC is another party presently in the government coalition, the Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība, or ZZS), one of Latvia’s traditional parties, but largely still the party of previous Soviet nomenklatura. The party is holding its own in the polls through its wide representation at the regional and local government level. A major coup for this party was in successfully opposing the reappointment of Chief Prosecutor Juris Maizītis, who has been long investigating controversial oligarch Aivars Lembergs, mayor of Ventspils, who is the party’s candidate for prime minister.

Meanwhile, on the right, For Fatherland and Freedom (Tevzemei un brīvībai, or LNNK/TB) is also facing annihilation at the elections and has formed an alliance with the radical nationalist All for Latvia (Visu Latvijai). Visu Latvijai has been a very active and aggressive party, but is dogged by controversy and accused in Europe of having Nazi sympathies. This nationalist block has some hope of getting into the Saeima, but relations with Vienotība are cool after Vienotība rejected TB/LNNK’s approach to join it. And Vienotība will not have a bar of Visu Latvijai.

The parties of ZZS, the People’s Party and LPP see themselves as forming an integrated elite, destined to rule in post-Soviet Latvia, with close links to business (hence each having an iconic oligarch) and indeed seeing politics as just one arm of self-aggrandisment. Their aim is to form the next governemt, without the help of Harmony Centre, thus marginalising Vienotība even if, as currently possible, Vienotība will be the largest party in the Saeima.

The coming months will see a massive propaganda effort against the Dombrovskis government, arguing it has done nothing for people, is beholden to Western banks and interests, and capitalising on any inability to deliver policy—an inability precisely as a result of their coalition partners’ or ex-partners’ undermining.

The stakes are very high, not only for this October election but for the future of Latvia. Vienotība will indeed have a fight on its hands.

Latvia wins in European Court of Human Rights

Despite the continuing economic gloom, one recent event has restored something of Latvia’s credibility internationally. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights on May 17 supported Latvia and overturned a previous ruling from its sectional court.

The case concerned Vasily Kononov, a Soviet partizan veteran who had been sentenced by Latvian courts to a short period of imprisonment for his part in a World War II action when, dressed in German uniforms, his company in 1944 killed several civilians suspected of collaborating with the Nazis, including burning several men and women alive. Kononov had appealed his case up to the European court, with the question whether Latvia had the powers to try a person for war crimes in these circumstances, particularly in light of the passing of time and the lack of any relevant war crimes legislation at the time the action took place.

In a lengthy judgment, the court in meticulous detail went over the ground of conduct of military personnel in war, and agreed that Latvia did have the right to prosecute in this case, as all miliatary personnel have long been subject to international laws of conduct, and that lack of war crimes legislation is immaterial.

The case settled that even those on the side of the “victors” can be held responsible for war crimes, that military personnel are responsible for their actions, and that there is no time limit to war crime prosecution.

The outcome brought a strong reaction from Moscow, which had been a participating party in the case, and which has been on the losing end of several other high-profile court decisions, particularly in relation to Chechyna. Demonstrations against Latvia were held in Russia. The Latvian government played down the result, seeking not to inflame feelings.

Interestingly, the result was also played down by Harmony Centre. Although some individuals in this pro-Russian party expressed disappointment at the decision, the party as such expressed no strong criticism, a clear attempt to boost its credentials as a responsible party that Latvians need not fear.

How much this party will be feared or not in the coming months will be another crucial factor in the October election.

More than 20 years in the making, a Latvian invention is about to transform the audio industry. With this software and hardware solution, sound emitted from a loudspeaker becomes clearer and more natural than ever.

The applications are numerous, ranging from high-end sound studios, cinemas, theatres to home entertainment systems, computers and sound players on the move—car audio or portable audio including MP3 docking stations—and even outdoor concert venues.

The technology is called CONEQ and its inventor, Latgale-born Raimonds Skuruls, has spent most of his life looking at better sound reproduction from loudspeakers. The first time the technology was publically demonstrated was during the “Lāčplēsis” opera performance more than two decades ago. Later, Skuruls worked as a sound engineer with Latvian rock group Jumprava. In 2004, Skuruls together with investor Viesturs Sosārs formed Real Sound Lab.

CONEQ is already featured in products such as the Hitachi HDTV Ultravision and Wooo brand plasma and LCD television models, Panasonic VIERA brand Plasma television products and Kenwood music entertainment systems. Los Angeles-based Mi Casa Studios, renowned for top-end sound quality on film projects such as Lord of the Rings, The Golden Compass and other blockbuster films, is also using the CONEQ audio correction system.

To date the company has invested more than LVL 1 million and has also received a significant proportion in European Union funds. Today Real Sound Lab has offices in both the United States and Japan, plus a dealer network stretching to the other side of the world. In 2008 Skuruls received the most innovative product award from the Ministry of Economics and the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) and in 2009 was the third person to receive the Latvian Academy of Sciences Walter Zapp (inventor of the Minox camera) award for his loudspeaker correction technology. It is especially encouraging to see the company adopt the model whereby the non-key competences such as programming, hardware design and manufacturing are outsourced to other local Latvian companies and to the University of Latvia.

Eager to experience CONEQ, I visited the headquarters of Real Sound Lab located in an understated office building just outside the centre of Rīga. Atis Straujums, director of development, was quick to correct my preconceptions about CONEQ. This technology is all about correcting loudspeakers so that they can accurately reproduce the original sound source. Correcting room acoustics is another topic. In other words, if you play recorded violin through a CONEQ-corrected loudspeaker in a subway station, it should sound like a violinist playing in a subway station and not like a violinist playing in a concert hall or elsewhere.

Straujums chose to correct the monitor speakers connected to his laptop. With a measurement microphone attached to the laptop and running the CONEQ software, it was a simple matter of waving the microphone in front of each of the speakers in a zig-zag pattern for no more than two minutes. From the accumulated measurement data of more than 300 points the CONEQ software calculated the acoustic power frequency response of each of the speakers and a correction filter was created. The difference in sound quality was quite noticeable.

The CONEQ software comes in both Starter and Workshop versions, is compatible with both Windows and Macintosh computer systems, and starts at around EUR 100.

For professional producers in studios (or audiophiles who want to apply CONEQ to their home entertainment systems) a rack-mounted APEQ hardware equaliser is also available. This unit, currently available in a 2-channel configuration and later this year as a 8-channel unit, is loaded with the appropriate correction filters and placed before the amplifier and speakers.

But the real market for CONEQ won’t be direct sales to home users. The main strategy is to approach the big names in the audio and multimedia industry and convince them to begin incorporating this technology into their TVs, entertainment and speaker systems, portable players, mobile telephones and other consumer and professional audio appliances. The first wave has already begun and ongoing marketing efforts will ensure a Latvian success story.