All About Latvia

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.

Share on Facebook

If you ask Cubans, they are very satisfied and believe that they haven’t had problems since 1959. The most important thing is that people felt happy.

– Latvian President Valdis Zatlers in an interview to Belarusian newspaper Belorusskie Novosti.

Share on Facebook

VALKA – A three-hour ride on the train (at a cost of what must be the cheapest ride per kilometer in Europe) followed by a short ride on a local bus will get you to the Latvian border town of Valka.

As it is typical among most provincial towns in Latvia, Valka suffers from chronically being short on cash. Most of the money and investment remains in the Latvian capital and the remaining change trickled down to towns like Valka.

Empty unfinished windowless multi-apartment five-story homes decorate the southern outskirts of the town. I see them as the bus rushes me to the town’s center.

Sitting on the bus among mostly elderly Russian-speaking retirees chattering about their pensions, children and grandchildren, I feel myself a stranger. A country music singer Tracy Bird’s words suddenly fill my mind.

Way back up in the country, back in the hills
Down in the hollows where the folks are real
Livin’ with the crazies and the old wildcats
Sawed off shotguns and coonskin caps
That’s where I’m from and I’m proud to say
I’m from the country and I like it that way
Everybody knows everybody, everybody calls you friend
You don’t need an invitation, kick off your shoes come on in
Yeah, we know how to work and we know how to play
We’re from the country and we like it that way

And I thought how similar this American attitude is in this small town in northern Latvia with a population around 7,000 people. Everyone indeed knew everyone. An older gentleman called on a driver by name to stop the bus at a local hospital. People chit-chat about life in the bid city, brushing me with their glances. And I realize before I even say a word, everyone knows I’m a stranger in these parts.

The empty apartment buildings on the way to town have been abandoned back in the early 1990s when the town industry lost its market and crumbled. The town fell into economic depression, typical of small towns in post-Soviet Latvia.

To top off a string of economic problems, new independent countries, Estonia and Latvia, restored their borders. The internal border between two Soviet republics became the national border of two independent states, making it more complicated for people and goods to cross the Latvian-Estonian frontier. It meant customs, passports, paperwork.

Three points for border crossing have been opened, other streets that crossed the border have been closed with an impressive fence to prevent illegal border crossing into the Scandinavian candy-land.

Valka and the Estonian twin town of Valga share an interesting history. Valga and Valka made up the German-sounding town of Walk, and until 1920 it used to be one town with one government. In 1917-18, Estonians and Latvians began fulfilling their independence dreams.

Inside a building, which is now in Estonia, Latvian leaders for the first time called on Latvians to form an independent country one year before the independence was officially proclaimed at the Latvian capital, Riga. In another building, also in Estonia, the Green Peasants, the leading pro-independence party, was formed.

In short, the cradle of Latvia’s first independence movement is now located beyond Latvia’s borders.

Estonians helped Latvians win their independence from Russia. But neither Latvians nor Estonians could agree where exactly the border of the newly-formed Republic of Latvia and Republic of Estonia should be. The frustrated British colonel Stephen George Tallents drew the border through the town, which zigzags through city streets to this day.

On Raina street on the Latvian side (pictured), green moss covers the wet pavement near a patched-up border fence. Marking the border, Konnaoja (Frog Creek) runs underneath the barely-noticeable bridge, which have since developed holes.

A black-and-while metal road barrier stretches along the width of the street and sidewalks in front of the fence. The Latvian side faces a back door of an Estonian supermarket. Ahead of the bridge, a black-striped border poll reading “The Republic of Latvia” stands in the middle of the road.

The beautiful modern-art construction grew in the last 17 years when Latvia and Estonia re-established their respective borders.

A simple metal fence replaced an impressive sharp-pointed fence on Raina street in 2004 and now town officials from both sides plan to take it down altogether to allow pedestrians to cross the border freely when both countries join the common visa space.

Share on Facebook

RIGA – It’s time to update that good ol’ blogroll.

Baltic Visitor is a blog of travel tips for those who are traveling through the three different Baltic countries. The blog’s author is John Oates, a freelance travel writer, who is currently working on a guide to the Baltic States for a major UK publisher. “He is a former winner of the Guardian Young Travel Writer of the Year Award (for an article on Lithuania), and has written for publications including The London Paper and Global magazine.” BV was kind enough to link to this blog and it’s only appropriate to return the favor.

AB.PHOTO.LATVIA is a photolog stuffed with plenty of visual goodness from this small country of ours.

Ivan v. Jaan is a Russia-centered Estonian blog on politics. You’ve got to keep taps on your enemies, you know.

Baltic Bulletin comes from the mind of Mike Collier, the editor of Baltic Features, a one-stop shop for all your feature needs anywhere in the Baltics. The Baltic Bits entries are a must read, really.

Morten Hansen, an economics professor at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga has been blogging about Latvia’s economy on L-Diena Web site, leaving Latvians scratching their heads. Why does a Danish professor write in English on a Latvian web site? With rising inflation and bursting economy, it’s a shame not to read the Great Dane’s musings.

Share on Facebook