Disregard everything I’ve said about presidential candidates up until this point. It doesn’t matter any more.
Yesterday, the ruling coalition — or “a gang” as some in the local media call it — agreed on one candidate: a local doctor, a head of a local hospital Valdis Zatlers. The four-party coalition presented Zalters, MD, as an independent candidate. He came following weeks of political theater known as “Electing the President,” when large parties in the coalition nominated their own candidates one by one.
Now it’s widely believed to be smokescreen. As their candidates roamed around state offices gently pleading for support of other coalition parties, someone had a plan.
Since then, we learned that Zatlers took money in envelopes from his patients, which in most countries is known as bribery. Granted, it’s a culture here to give a doctor “something nice” for doing his job, yet the question whether he paid any taxes on those gifts remains in the air.
Zatlers kept the best implants for himself while insisting other doctors use implants of a worse quality. This independent candidate signed the ruling “People’s Party” manifesto.
As Peteris observed, “Unfortunately, as Aivars Ozolins points out in his searing editorial, the fact that Dr. Zatlers was willing to play this rôle is a bad beginning from which he may never rise. The Latvian President has few powers, but Vaira Vike-Freiberga has proven how important they can be if wisely used. The coalition has once again shown that the voters, and indeed the people of Latvia, do not matter at all.”
This is Latvian politics at its best. And worst.
And today Saskanas Centrs, a left-of-center opposition party, nominated a former head of the Constitutional Court Aivars Endzins. Although SC is a bloc which includes reformed communists, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Endzins would be a true independent president if he is elected.
Endzins has proven himself to be a rarity in Latvian politics — an independent voice among the yea-sayers. He voted for the country’s independence in 1990. He graduated from Moscow State University. In 1988, he served in the Popular Front of Latvia. He’s been really outspoken about what’s going on in the country as the chief of the legislative branch and after that. He’s not afraid to show his independent thinking and he would be an ideal candidate for the country’s highest post.
And people respect him. In the last two hours when the news broke, the story received 64 comments on the portal VDiena. Most people are expressing doubt that the gang that rules this country will allow someone like Endzins to be elected as the next president. An independent think-tank for open government already called on Sandra Kalniete to withdraw her candidacy from the post (she didn’t stand a chance anyway) in favor of Endzins.
And I suspect she will do that. Tonight.
Update: 2305 EET Speaking during a public affairs show on the national TV, Sandra Kalniete withdrew her candidacy for the post of the president in favor of Aivars Endzins. At the end of the show, Endzins received 15421 votes from TV shows viewers.