All About Latvia

LONDON – Gone to the U.S. for two weeks. No updates are expected until January 15.

RIGA – A friend of mine asked me the other day whether I had heard that Soviet partisan-veteran Vasily Kononov has been acquitted by the European Courts of Human Rights.

I have not. The Latvian media had kept a tight lid on the news that would have been splashed across the front pages all major newspapers in this country.

Or it wasn’t news at all.

It turned out to be a figment of someone’s overactive imagination, or simply reporting based on hearsay without crediting any sources. Ivan v. Jaan chronicles pretty well how this news item evolved from an utter acquittal to its mysterious disappearance among English-language Russian news sources known for their impartiality and balance.

Okay, the last three words were thrown in for a joke.

Of all news sources in Latvia, Russian-language Telegraf alone picked up on the non-news news.

RIGA – Wishing all readers a very Merry Christmas with this photo of a Maxima-sponsored Christmas tree by the Cabinet of Ministers in Riga. We’ll be back on December 27.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, right, receives a Zoll-Douane sign from an unidentified person as a souvenir in Zittau, on Germany’s eastern fringe, where the country meets Poland and the Czech Republic. Source: Yahoo!

TALLINN – I celebrated joining the common visa zone on the border of Latvia and Estonia standing in the crowd of people who came out to the border posts in Valga and Valka.

And it felt like being part of the history for them and for me.

An older man was asking his friends to take more photos.

“They’ll put them in the museum, you know,” he said.

At midnight, the border gates opened, allowing people from both sides of the border to mingle.

Then, I drove to Tallinn in the middle of the night, crashing in a hotel room when it was already early morning.

Right now, we’re all anticipating the arrival of the EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini and the European Commission President Jose Barroso at the Tallinn sea port.

A big band military orchestra is playing Christmas-theme music and rag time at the Tallinn port. Messages flash on the large screen – “No More Passport, Just Pass the Port.”

Joining Schengen for nine EU countries opens up another chapter in the European history for the Eastern European countries, including the three Baltic states.

In an atmosphere of symbolism and unity, political leaders all over eastern parts of the European Union broke apart border fences, railings, and gates. For millions of people around the continent at midnight, it felt like an instant page for history books.

Gradually, the continent torn apart by war and conflict throughout centuries is becoming more united than ever before in history.

VALGA, Estonia – Not much time for reflection at the moment, but enough to confess that I ended up going to Valga for the Schengen festivities after all. Watched a small display of fireworks, listened to an Ode to Joy and became part of the historic event as Latvians and Estonians crossed the border en masse leaving the border control checks a thing of the past.

It’s a great day to be a European.

RIGA – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would rather forget about history on the first “historic” visit of a high-ranking Russian official to the Baltic state of Latvia.

“We‘re ready to leave white spots in our history to historians,” Lavrov said on Tuesday during a press conference in Riga after completing the border treaty on his one-day visit, which the Latvian government hailed as “a historic event.”

“The heads of both countries have to put efforts into changing public opinion and base the relations on good neighbor ties, not forgetting history, but not making it a part of contemporary politics, either,” Lavrov said after his meeting with Latvian Prime
Minister Aigars Kalvitis.

While Russia reaches into its own Soviet and tsarist history to revive its new national identity, the painstaking history in the Baltics – which joined the European Union and NATO in 2004 – walks the cobbled streets of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.

History in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – whose total population of 7.1 million people is less than Moscow‘s – is alive in a series of commemorative days, all tied to the Soviet period.

History is present in Latvian politics and it’s felt on the street.

Their shared and bitter history makes emotional any Baltic defiance of Russian investments or energy reliance on its former
overlord.

For the three Baltic states, the last century commenced under Russia‘s tsars. After World War I, the three countries gained independence.

Then, Germany and the USSR signed a pact in 1939, which scarred the Baltic nations for decades and ultimately cost them their independence in 1940.

Soviet troops swept into the Baltics, and Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of people to die in Siberian gulags.

When Hitler‘s troops marched through in turn, some saw the Germans as liberators – and some collaborated with the Nazis.

Russian speakers arrived in Latvia and Estonia during the Soviet period following World War II, helping to reduce the number of ethnic Latvians and Estonians in these countries and instilling the fear that the small nations would eventually lose their own language and culture.

Some Russian speakers and their children remain without
citizenship in Estonia and Latvia, which complicates the relationship between the two countries and Russia.

Since the early 1990s, the Baltic states and Russia have argued over their interpretation of the post-war Soviet period.

Moscow has tried to portray it as a liberation from Nazism, but for many Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, it was a tragic period of occupation and subjugation.

Each country maintains a museum of occupation as a painful reminder of its Soviet past.

In Latvia‘s capital Riga, the Soviet-style windowless structure on a medieval town square represents an architectural and historical eyesore as a reminder of the small nation‘s painful past.

Included on an official itinerary of every visit from a queen to a diplomat, the Museum of the Occupation tracks Latvia‘s grueling history from its loss of independence to the Soviet Union, through deportations and war until 1991 when the Soviet Union fell.

However, Lavrov won‘t see its exhibitions on his historic trip. Latvia‘s Foreign Ministry said Lavrov was on a working visit to Latvia and a visit to the museum was not part of the official protocol.

RIGA – Among three people said to be in the running to become the next prime minister, a man who had been officially charged with forming the next government was a back-up candidate.

At the end of last week, Latvian president has asked the outgoing interior minister Ivars Godmanis, a former prime minister, minister of finance, and a DJ at a national radio station, to form the five-party coalition. And as it looks right now, majority of the same people will remain in the new government, which really doesn’t address the issue of public trust, which toppled the government of Aigars Kalvitis.

And the five-party center-right coalition is a bad idea because it leaves no reasonable opposition in the parliament. The generally pro-Russian Harmony Centre is still not considered a serious opposition.

In the last government, however, New Era party served the role of an opposition, but it really failed at challenging the outgoing government on issues and came across as a party that only seeks to gain power.

A democracy without opposition might as well be a benevolent dictatorship. And it is my hope that the New Era will remain outside the current government to keep the democratic balance in the parliament.

The party talks have been on going since Monday. The President offered no deadline by which the government must be formed.

President George W. Bush meets with Latvia President Valdis Zatlers at the United Nations in New York. White House photo.

RIGA – As the formation of the new government suffers through birthing pains, Latvian President Valdis Zatlers (pictured) stands to make a name for himself.

Elected in June, the president hasn’t had a greater opportunity to show off what he is made of politically – whether he is the puppet of the four-party coalition that put him there or he is an independent thinker and a politician.

According to the Constitution, the president appoints – or taps in media lingo – the prime minister, who then tries to form a coalition government.

Since the December 5 resignation, the president has been thinking about his choice – after all, he doesn’t want to be wrong.

I’ve often often often made fun of Zatlers for his ability to put a foot in his mouth and the way he has been put in his office.

During press conferences, the man still looks like he’s wearing someone else’s suit. However, making a right decision in this case could bring him confidence and earn some political capital in the long-run.

Zatlers received so-called homework from the three officially nominated candidates. Today, however, the president consulted with three business leaders allowing media commentators to speculate that Zatlers may be considering someone who is not affiliated with any political force for the post.

But this is really an opportunity for Zatlers, who was appointed at the zoo and had not been a popular choice for the top position. The public perceived him as being the pocket of the ruling People’s Party until, perhaps, his surprising appearance during the Subdued Revolution in November.

Now is his chance to become the people’s president. If Zatlers appoints Harry Potter, a miserable choice for the prime minister, he will lose however little political capital he’d gained since he took office in July. If not, he’ll manage to unite the society behind someone else and gain from it greatly.

Now it’s all up to The Castle. Just don’t take too long.

RIGA – The most favored candidate to become Latvia’s next prime minister is a feeble solution to the crisis the previous government stepped into.

The government, led by Aigars Kalvitis of the People’s Party, had to resign on December 5 after thousands of people flooded the streets to demand a change amidst the political culture peppered with cynical attitude toward people.

Suffering through low popularity and high number of seats in the parliament, the ruling People’s Party offered a brand new savior in the form of the minister of regional development Edgars “Harry Potter” Zalans (pictured).

The 40-year-old former mayor of the town of Kuldiga took a page out of the George W. Bush’s early days, according to his interview to the magazine Privata Dzive (Private Life).

“I read magazines,” he told, well, the magazine. “I don’t read newspapers out of principle, so that I wouldn’t read any information that creates negative emotions.”

Besides not reading newspapers, Zalans plans to earn back the trust lost by the previous administration by not participating in the most watched political TV program on Latvian television Kas Notiek Latvija? (What’s Happening in Latvia?).

The TV program has become the token Wednesday night line-up led by journalist Janis Domburs, who sits politicians down, asks them questions and challenges them on policies.

As the Baltic Bulletin notes,

“Domburs is never rude per se, but he has no problem with letting his guests – and the audience – know when they aren’t being candid or are just being plain daft. The show is a Wednesday evening institution for the intelligentsia and politicos and if any single media outlet can be said to have a direct influence on policy, this is it.”

Zalans, however, told the magazine, “That dude has real problems, you know what I’m sayin’?”

All day today, the People’s Party politicians and Zalans press secretary have been trying to control the damage, saying his comments were taken out of context or hyped up by the magazine. Zalans himself, however, said everything he could when he kept quiet today.

At the same time, if appointed and confirmed, Zalans will become a third little-known politician who jolted through the ranks to become the third most important political leader in Latvia.

The cynicism of the political elite, the People’s Party in particular, is astonishing. They’ve nominated the man, 9 years my senior, who doesn’t read newspapers; who completed “brainwashing” courses at the Leadership Academy, related to now-defunct U.S company Lifespring; who is so distant from the people he plans to serve that it becomes clear such a man can never win back the public trust.