All About Latvia

RIGA – Maybe this is the time to draw preliminary conclusions of The Subdued Revolution of Nov. 3.

On one hand, the revolution has succeeded - people demanded the government’s resignation and its adherence to the rule of law. They’ve got it.

The embattled Aleksejs Loskutovs has been reinstated as the head of the anti-corruption agency after he has been unlawfully suspended.

Citing some work to do, the government led by Aigars Kalvitis penciled in a resignation on Dec. 5, five days after the Constitutional Court is due to make a decision whether the ratified Latvian-Russian border treaty contradicts our Constitution.

The unions, who didn’t get what they wanted out of the budget, are continuing their efforts to collect enough signatures to dissolve the parliament.

Maybe I wasn’t right in calling the November revolution “subdued.” I wasn’t expecting a Georgia scenario by any means, but I was expecting a bit more emotion.

On the other hand, it still unclear what has really changed since that day.

The system remains the same, worse yet, the current government led by the People’s Party is mulling over the next prime minister, even though it’s president’s job to pick the prime minister.

Besides, chances are very high that the next government will be almost exactly the same as the previous government even though the current coalition partners has asked the opposition new Era party to participate.

The reason is rather simple: a lack of alternative.

With all the recent hullabaloo about the opposition Harmony Centre, a relatively mild pro-Russian party, joining in the government, one can be quite certain that it won’t happen.

No one’s truly considering letting Russians in government.

We’re not ready for it, yet. There’s plenty of paranoia among some Latvians that a Russian party will abolish the language laws, recall the education reform and will call to join in with Russia into the obscure union known as the Commonwealth of the Independent States.

The other reason is -communists- socialists, which joined in with the Harmony Centre and are represented in the parliament. They used to be communists, you see, and Latvian voters still have a bad aftertaste 17 years since they were last in power.

With communists or without, the current system of forming the government is broken; it’s flawed. It doesn’t offer any alternatives to the current ruling parties. This is why the parties that rule can afford to form new governments. This is why Kalvitis can have a certain arrogance about him because he knows that even if he resigns, his party will form the next government, and maybe even the government after that.

No elections would really stand in the way because Latvian voters will generally vote for right parties, while Russian voters will vote for the left.

The only way the system will change if we bury the hatchet and seriously consider creating a healthy parliamentary republic with a healthy opposition parties receiving a healthy amount of votes and offering healthy alternatives to governing.

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Originally posted on Latvians Online

Today’s protest disappointed me as I stood in the snow and high winds listening to what appeared to be a choral concert with a frequent interlude for public speaking – I wouldn’t call them passionate oratories – about matters of the state.

My disappointment stems from the apparent lack of fervor, passion, and conviction among those 7,000 or 9,000 who braved the first snow and came out to the Dome Square in the Old Riga.

They say it’s the weather’s fault.

How it would have been appropriate to use the first snow as a metaphor for the dying of the old way and preparing for the new. But it didn’t seem to fit.

It didn’t fit because the air filled with snowflakes was empty of revolutionary spirit and the chilling wind was not the wind of change I had hoped for.

It was a polite, “Mm, remember us? We’re the people,” composed together with the already-notorious Latvian pessimism.

Even with the Loskutovs case set aside on the government’s back burner for a while, people in the crowd and the speakers on the stage seemed to have forgotten the success the October 18th protest has already brought.

And who’s kidding? We all have something to complain about.

Aside stood, what local Russians call “tautas meitas,” a traditional row of female elderly citizens who protest against – well, anything really. Farther down the road, some guy demanded the EU stop telling us what rate we exchange our lats to their euros. I mean, if our economy should crumble, we’d rather do it ourselves. Lettish nationalists come out to play in the snow as well – they demanded, among other things, protecting this country from new immigration. In the back, a group of local Russians gathered to protest against the denationalised apartments from which they might be kicked out. Of course, the call everyone remembers—“Dissolve the parliament…”

What polite little revolutionaries we are, a poet once said. Did it send a strong signal to the Kalvitis government that it needs to go? Not any more so than the president’s words on Friday when he said the government without four ministers cannot work. Was it the beginning of change in the political culture? Too soon to tell, I think. For now, though, there is no viable alternatives to the current four-party coalition.

I’ve read the resolution adopted at the tautas sapulce. It is filled with great slogans I could get behind about justice, rule of law, democracy in Latvia. I just am not sure what practical consequences this resolution would have. New government with old faces? Another election?

Maybe that’s how revolutions are done nowadays.

Photo from the people’s gathering this morning on the Dome Square in Old Riga taken from apollo.lv

Update: Juris Kaza posted a video from Saturday’s Subdued Revolution.

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