All About Latvia

RIGA – Two young Russian men climbed aboard a bus that I was taking back home from a busy work day. Both are in the late 20s - one was carrying around a one-year-old boy. The two guys spoke loudly to each other, which is an abnormality in the country where everyone is trying to keep to themselves, especially on public transportation.

On the next stop, three young girls boarded the bus. They were probably around 15 or 16. Their faces soiled with heavy makeup. They spoke Russian.

“Hey, girls,” said the man with the child.

The girls ignored him and suddenly switched to Latvian. The man left them alone. When the two guys left, the girls switched back to Russian.

True story.

RIGA – In the heat of the 2007 municipal reform aimed at redrawing lines of local governments, Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis (left) received a gift - the globe of Latvia. Across the two continents, the word “Latvia” spreads from China to Great Britain.

In a way, it represents the Latvian worldview. One could not find a better illustration of a mentality of the imperial wannabes. For centuries, Latvians have been ruled over - by Germans, Russians, Swedes (and not necessarily in that order). Twenty years after it regained independence, the young nation is still struggling to create citizen-friendly elite that is capable of governing wisely. But often it is based on weak national self-esteem which paradoxically transforms into the visions of grandeur.

The pride stands in the way of, for example, considering an option of devaluation as a way to recover from the crisis. The pride stands in the way, as anecdotal evidence suggests, to ask for help in handling matters of importance, like construction of the national library, or preparing the economic recovery. Someone had suggested that Latvia could hire a consultant from outside to teach Latvians to govern themselves. Egos and pride stand in the way of prosperity in this country.

It is surprising that folks in a mostly-unknown country of 2.3 million people - let’s face it, a speck on the world arena - has large egos that could fill the whole of Canada.

Latvians like to tell a story about the New World conquest, the Courland Colonization. Only if Brits would talk about their world domination with an apology, Latvians would talk about it with pride. Perhaps, it’s an attempt to compensate for national complexes and the seeming lack of lengthy history of self-rule. Our neighbors to the south are celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of the crime record that mentions them by name. Latvian history – as in the history of Latvia – starts much later.

RIGA – “You quit taking pictures, or I’ll break your camera,” one angry man told a group of people taking pictures of the detention of the National Bolshevik leader Vladimir Linderman. The threat was rather harmless as the man went on his merry way without turning around to see if someone took his threat seriously.

At the gathering near the Victory Monument, Linderman decided to display the hammer-and-sickle red flags with words “For Motherland” on them. The police quickly took down the flag while Linderman refused to comply. One woman holding a bland red flag tried to cheer Linderman on. “That’s the Soviet flag. The Soviet Union won the Second World War,” she continued to repeat. The refusal to comply with the police earned Linderman a place in the police van.

The rocket. The young friendly Russian who speaks fluent Latvian. The Soviet-educated former corruption fighter.

These people are on the menu for the local elections less than a month away. The June 6 contest is about personalities more than about party platforms or programs. A giant Ainars Šlesers overlooks fast-moving crowds near the central train station in Rīga (as pictured above). Seeing the party ad from afar invokes warm images of The Dear Leader who would take care of his people at a time of the most severe economic crisis even before you can get close enough to read the money quote: “I won’t teach you how to save, I will help you make money.”

Šlesers stays true to his slogan. Since 2004, the state budget has not run a single surplus, spending more than it was raking in. The finance ministry’s data shows a 1.0 percent deficit in 2004, 0.8 percent deficit in 2005, 0.5 percent deficit in 2006, 1.3 percent deficit in 2007. Šlesers was not in charge of the state coffers, but his 2004 editorial certainly set the tone for spending, which brought Latvia on the verge of financial collapse.

“The Latvia’s First Party is not afraid to say that the deficit-free budget is not the end in itself,” he said. “The budget ought to serve the development of the country, not as an answer to the World Bank.(…) We are not afraid to take on a risk to say that in the Latvian situation one should quit warning about some kind of economic overheating, we ought to push the pedal to the metal.”

We know how that turned out. But now, Šlesers is trying to use the same principle to win this elections. And it seems to be working. The popularity of the Latvia’s First Party has more than doubled in April compared to the month earlier. Almost every fourth citizen in Rīga is willing to vote for Šlesers as the mayor of Riga, according to a survey published this morning.

And yet, voters don’t get to elect the mayor. Mayor gets elected by the city council. And a party that wins most seats on the city council gets to order the tune.

For the most part though, individual personalities are driving the vote in this election.

French goalkeeper Fabrice Lhenry looks dejected after his team lost at the end of his Group E qualification round game versus Latvia at the 2009 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships on May 2, 2009 in Bern. Latvia won 7-1. AFP PHOTO / FABRICE COFFRINI

RIGA – Morten Hansen tells it how it is:

[T]his simple analysis explains why the country is still poor in an EU sense: It is on average poorly equipped with skills, possibly poorly equipped with physical capital and most likely equipped with a burdensome public sector – and that’s why it deals with scrap metal and not wind turbines.

RIGA – This morning I got a call from a friend who works as a teacher. She sounded upset over the news reports that the government plans to slash up to 8,000 teacher jobs in the fall. That’s one-sixth of all the teachers in the country. I tried to calm her down, but at the same time pointed out that it appears the government has no other choice.

“They want riots?” my friend asked. A legitimate question following the teacher protest.

The friend works several jobs, trying to support herself, her daughter and the unemployed son-in-law. The son-in-law used to work in construction. The little jobs he gets now don’t pay well or on time. She tries to make ends meet by offering private lessons, but that means working six days a week with little relief or rest.

Now the government has announced it will cut jobs, following an audit. Diena this morning said that there’s one teacher for every seven students in Latvia. It’s definitely too many in a country where the population has been shrinking. At the same time, little is known about what criteria the government will be using to slash teacher’s jobs. What’s a good teacher - is the question of the day.

These results of my EU Profiler political affiliation test have surprised me. I didn’t think that the Civic Union (PS) would rank this high on my list.