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.

I have a whole bookshelf of Latvian dictionaries ranging from Mīlenbachs-Endzelīns, the nine-volume Latviešu Literārās valodas vārdnīca, to the Turkina favourites, but I find myself consulting them less and less as new online resources and more capable Latvian language software appears—most of which are free.

Several years ago the Rīga-based software company Tilde launched on online encyclopedia called Letonika. Although this is a subscription service, Letonika’s online dictionary is freely available to anyone at www.letonika.lv/dictionary. This is one of the most comprehensive dictionaries available, with more than 100,000 words, rivaling most printed dictionaries. It works between the Latvian, English, German and Russian languages. If this is not enough, Tilde also offer a Windows-based software package called Birojs 2005 that extends the capabilities to look up and translate whole phrases, search for similar words and add new words. The program fully integrates with Microsoft Office’s spellchecker, so that the red and wavy lines you normally see with your English spellchecker work just the same way in Latvian. But it is money well spent if you are constantly working with Latvian documents.

Tilde also offers an SMS dictionary (www.tilde.lv/sms) where for a small fee (24 santīms) you can receive a translation of a requested word on your mobile telephone. To translate “maize” into English you would send the text message “la maize” (where la indicates that you want to translate from Latvian into English, or latviesu -> anglu). With diacritics you will need to return to the old method using apostrophes or doubling vowels, because not all mobile phones are able to display the Latvian diacritics. The only drawback is that this service is only available to LMT (Latvijas Mobīlais telefons) subscribers.

The University of Latvia’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, headed by Andrejs Spektors, has since 1993 been publishing and improving its Latviešu valodas skaidrojošā vārdnīca. Entering “tulkot” gives you not only the possible meanings (for example, “1. Izteikt citā valodā” and “2. Skaidrot”), but also shows you some example phrases of how the word is used. For the more grammatically minded it also displays the conjugations or verb forms. If you don’t agree with the results you can use an online form to send the feedback to the lab.

The historical Mīlenbaha-Endzelīna Latviešu valodas vārdnīca has been an ongoing project for the last 12 years. With the help of the Unicode standard (included in all modern versions of Windows and Macintosh), the lab recently updated the dictionary to include intonation symbols, such as the open and closed “e”. To access this dictionary you will need to register.

If you need someone who is hearing impaired, the laboratory has also produced a Latvian sign language dictionary with animation.

What about specialised dictionaries? Computers have only been mainstream for the last 20 years and the Latvian language has needed to catch up. The monthly newsletter “LatDati” produced by Juris Mazutis during the early years had a regular section on translating computer terminology into Latvian. From this and subsequent online discussions (including the mailing list VALODA) new words were born, such as dators (computer) and tīmeklis (the Web), that are now regularly used by the major newspapers in Latvia. The Terminology Committee of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, led by Juris Borzovs, now runs a Web site dedicated to computer terminology at www.termini.lv. Did you know that “menu” translated is izvēlne, “chat” is terzēšana and “spam” is surogātpasts? However, the dictionary didn’t recognise “Google” or “Skype.”

A dictionary of biological terms can be found at latvijas.daba.lv/vardnica. If you want to be the next Latvian version of American billionaire Warren Buffet, the FinanceNet portal offers a dictionary specialising in economics and finance. Enter “trading” and you’ll get vērtspapīru publiskā apgrozība, while “depreciation” will yield either paātrināta nolietojuma metode or amortizācija. We couldn’t find any online legal dictionaries, but no doubt these will also appear with time.

For something a little more light-hearted, check out the Latvian Colloquial Dictionary, first published in 1990 by AIVA in Melbourne, Australia, and supplemented later by Ķikuraina valodiņa, published in 2001 in Rīga. With influences from both the Displaced Persons camps of World War II and the omnipresent Russian language during the last few decades in Latvia, the dictionary is sure to bring a chuckle or two. Who can guess the meaning of džentelbenķis, kumpels and mobiļņiks?

It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for another installment of “Latviešiem pasaulē,” a new show on Latvijas Radio 2 for Latvians living abroad. The two-hour show features a mix of popular Latvian music and messages from listeners read by hosts Roberts Buivids and Velga Vītola.

The debut of the show in January marked an interesting point in the history of Latvian radio broadcasting. First, it represents a return to the state-financed public broadcaster targeting listeners outside Latvia’s borders, an effort that ended in 1999 with shuttering of the shortwave program, Radio Rīga. Second, it relies on Internet broadcasting, because most of the intended listeners are well beyond the reach of Latvian radio signals.

International broadcasting generally is acknowledged to have been born in 1927, when Radio Nederland Wereldomroep began beaming shortwave signals to the Dutch East Indies. By the start of World War II, international broadcasting had become not just a means for reaching distant colonies, but was a powerful propaganda tool.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, international broadcasting in Eastern and Central Europe has changed dramatically. Some nations, such as the Czech Republic, still maintain shortwave outlets. Others, such as Latvia, have dropped theirs because of budgetary concerns or because the state broadcaster’s political role has changed.

In recent years, however, the migration of Latvian labor abroad has become notable, particularly to Ireland. The estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Latvian citizens now in Ireland, added to the tens of thousands of post-World War II Latvian emigrés and their descendants scattered across the continents (not to mention the descendants of all those who left Latvia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), represent a sizable audience. So it should not be surprising that Latvijas Radio 2 decided to put “Latviešiem pasaulē” on its schedule, making use of both its over-the-air frequencies in Latvia and live streaming over the Internet.

“In my opinion, every Latvian would be happy if there weren’t a need for this show and all Latvians lived in their homeland,” Buivids told me in an e-mail. Uldis Duka, director of Latvijas Radio 2, sees the show as a musical bridge meant to remind Latvians abroad that Latvia remembers them, loves them and awaits them, Buivids said.

“Besides, LR2 is not just the only Latvian music radio station in the world, but also a public broadcaster with a mission,” Buivids added. “To me that means that if just one of those living in Ireland, after hearing a greeting, decides to return to Latvia and their loved ones, then the show will have fulfilled its charge.”

The show’s format is simple. Listeners send in greetings, request a song, and Buivids and Vītola read the message on the air. The show also has begun to make use of press reports about Latvians abroad.

“In general, our goal is to generate positive feelings among listeners,” Buivids said. “That’s why we read, in their entirety, letters that tell about successful cooperation between Latvian communities in exile lands and those in the homeland.” He mentioned one letter about a Latvian-American who in his will left his savings to his childhood school in Latvia.

“Reading that, I understood how much this man was superior to the majority of those on the list of Latvia’s millionaires,” Buivids said.

But I wonder if the program couldn’t—or shouldn’t—at some point take on some weighty issues, such as the roots of the new emigration. Why have those thousands of migrants moved from Latvia to Ireland in search of work? How many will return? Sure, this question has been the topic of coverage in the Latvian media over the past year, but a radio show meant for Latvians abroad could serve as a constant sounding board for both the good and the bad of life abroad.

“Latviešiem pasaulē” may be heard Sundays from 10:00-12:00 hours in Latvia (08:00-10:00 GMT). An abbreviated version of the show is broadcast in Latvia from 02:00-03:00 Mondays (00:00-0:100 GMT). Both broadcasts may be heard over the Internet as live streams in RealMedia and Windows Media formats. Missed shows can be found in Latvian State Radio’s audio archive (a wonderful service!). Further information about the show itself is available from the Latviešiem pasaulē page.

By the way, for those still interested in hearing shortwave signals from Latvia, the old transmitter at Ulbroka near Rīga remains active on a frequency of 9290 kHz, renting time to various international broadcasters. Among them is Radio Six International, a Scotland-based rock music station.