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.

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!

The Latvian camp in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York celebrates it golden anniversary this year. What horrid memories I recall of my time there.

I was reminded of the camp when an e-mail arrived from Marģers Pinnis, who compiles the excellent online calendar of New York area Latvian events. The camp is formally known as the Latvian Lutheran Camp, but everyone just refers to it as Katskiļi  (The Catskills).

Perhaps it was 1968, after I had just finished the fifth grade, when my parents first hauled me and my belongings to the children’s summer camp. I dreaded the idea, just like many other kids dread the idea of being sent off to camp. For me it was double dread, because I knew I wouldn’t know anyone at the camp. Most of the kids were from New York City. We lived 90 miles north of the city in a small university town. My parents assured me that I would know at least one person—my godfather’s daughter, who was a year older than me and a veteran campgoer. They forgot one detail. She was a girl, and I was at the age when boys just didn’t mix with girls.

Sure enough, I didn’t know anyone. I was assigned to the boys’ barracks and took a lower bunk in a room full of strangers. I yearned for my room back home.

The snippets of memories that come back to me include plenty of inconvenience and trauma. Morning calisthenics were obligatory—before breakfast. I thought camp was about having fun! Then we marched to breakfast as a group, chanting “kreisā, kreisā, kreisā labā kreisā” (left, left, left right left).

Breakfast usually wasn’t too bad. I came to enjoy oatmeal covered with sugar and cinnamon. But lunch or dinner was a different story. It seemed that once a week we were forced to down one of the worst concoctions to ever come out of a Latvian kitchen—piena zupa ar klimpām un rozīnēm. Ugh. Milk soup with dumplings and raisins. Just to write this brings me shudders.

The cafeteria also was where young Latvian boys underwent one of their rites of passage. Seeking to emulate the camp counselors, we learned to drink—and in some cases even like—buttermilk. A few cautious sips one day might lead to a boy chugging a whole glass on a dare the next day.

Dares got you in trouble, even if it was just a quiet dare to yourself. I almost drowned undergoing another rite of passage. Swimming options included the lakeshore near the ezermāja. The water there was rumored to be full of leeches waiting to suck the blood of young Latvian children. On the other side of the lake was a dock where kids could dive into the deep water. I wasn’t about to tell anyone that I had never been in water over my head and had no idea what “treading” meant, so when my turn came to jump in, I went for it. As the blue sky above me disappeared in a swirl of lake water, I must have thought to myself that in the future—if there was to be one—I should be a bit more cautious. OK, so I didn’t drown. And I don’t remember how many more times that day I jumped into the deep.

Life in the barracks was rough. Short-sheeting was just the start. I am convinced a particular boy, a mean-spirited thug from New York City, had it in for me. Among his weapons was a towel with a knot tied on the end. A slap from that hurt like hell. He also stole, so you learned quickly to keep your trunk locked at all times, but especially after a “care package” arrived from home. The hard life in the barracks was compounded by the knowledge that we were untermenschen. The older boys, the cool boys, lived not in barracks but in one of the two large tents nearby. We realized that if we stuck it out and came back to camp every summer, eventually we’d graduate to the living quarters of the privileged.

As many parents know, kids usually end up liking camp. It was no different for me. The first few days of shock therapy led to friendships, good times and even a few life lessons. I learned to like buttermilk, I learned to swim in deep water, I had great fun in the weekly šķēršļu gājiens (round game), and I even got to dance with girls!

I went back to the Catskills the next summer, but the following year was sent even farther north to Canada’s Camp Sidrabene (not to be confused with its arch-enemy Camp Saulaine, against which we battled on the athletics field). I returned to the Catskills for one more year, this time having graduated to the Tents of the Cool Boys.

Years later, we sent our daughter to Gaŗezers in Michigan for summer camp for the first time, where she underwent similar rites of passage but came to love the place.

However, I believe she mercifully was spared piena zupa ar klimpām un rozīnēm.