Mar 03
Beyond Latvia, Wacky Neighbor to the East 1 Comment
This guy. The saddest part is probably the last paragraph:
The celebrations continued after Isayev’s body was taken away in an ambulance, and a winter dummy was burnt in a symbolic farewell to the coldest months of the year, the paper said.
Mar 03
Politics, The Dombrovskis government Comments Off
The Baltic Features is baffled:
All the parties are up to the same horse trading to some extent, giving the lie that they care about much more than their own interests. The government gets doled out first, and then we’ll wonder if there’s anyone in the party that won a ministry that can actually do the job.
If all the rhetoric about national unity and sacrifice was worth a sou, Dombrovskis should have been able to ask: “Regardless of how many cabinet posts I give you, are you in or out?”
Mar 03
The Godmanis government Comments Off
RIGA – The 90-minute press conference at the Cabinet of Ministers on Monday started with a search for a laptop and a projector. From there, it went downhill. In a tiny press conference room on the third floor of the government building, journalists – pens in hands – packed three rows of chairs. Everyone seem to be interested what will be said. The press release announced the outgoing Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and finance minister Atis Slakteris plan to inform the public about the ongoing talks with the International Monetary Fund.
And informed they did.
Most of the press conference, Godmanis – wearing his glasses on his forehead – showed charts and graphs regarding the state budget. Here is the budget deficit if we don’t consider raising social support. And here is the budget deficit, if we do. Here is the list of the government revenue raked in through the increased value-added tax. And here this is where we want the revenue to be.
In the end, it felt more like a slide presentation on public finances than an attempt to communicate with journalists and public. The Godmanis government – so unpopular among the people – collapsed almost two weeks ago because of this seeming inability to explain complex matters in a clear concise language to a farmer somewhere near Valmiera. Godmanis failed to meet people where they were.
It’s not that he hasn’t tried. One can admire Godmanis’ stamina. His face was on television; his voice was on the radio from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. He gave many interviews. But, as one local journalist put it, “It’s the question of content, not the time.” His frowny face served as a testament of bad situation in this country that are bound to get only worse. So as part of his New Year’s resolution, Godmanis promised to smile more in public. And like most resolutions, it lasted for about week.
The goal of the Monday’s press conference remains a mystery. It seemed the two men wanted to make sure the country knows that Valdis Dombrovskis, the PM-designate, is wrong – the country is not on the verge of bankruptcy and the budget cuts that Dombrovskis proposes won’t accomplish a thing. Slakteris seemed angry or frustrated that he won’t be in the next government when he refused to say what the old government would cut from the budget.
Mar 02
Beyond Latvia, Economy, Wacky Neighbor to the East Comments Off
The Economist’s Moscow bureau chief Arkady Ostrovsky warns of consequences for Russia as the reversal of fortune takes place. Will Russia be next on the list of countries that saw a public’s outrage in the time of economic collapse?
Whether the current Kremlin is prepared to open fire on its own people is unclear. Soviet hard-liners held their fire when thousands of Russians defeated the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. But back then, the kgb and its communist patrons were disoriented and weak. Putin and his regime, on the other hand, are stronger and, most importantly, have more to lose.
What’s even less clear is whether Russia’s police or military would obey the orders to shoot if they were given. The Vladivostok protests and the government’s violent response sparked an online debate in the chat room of Russia’s Interior Ministry. One post read: “Dear colleagues, Russia is at a crucial junction. An economic catastrophe is coming.… People’s patience is coming to an end.… Are we going to be the attack dogs of this regime?”
Another member replied: “I will never shoot at my own people.”
The ministry hurriedly closed down the forum, citing “technical problems.”
….
“There is nothing more misleading than to portray Russia as a liberal-minded society suppressed by a nasty bunch of former kgb agents. The uncomfortable truth is, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed boss of the Yukos oil company destroyed by the Kremlin, put it: Putin “is more liberal and more democratic than 70 percent of the population.” And unlike late Soviet leaders who inspired the contempt of the population, Putin even now remains authentically popular.
Putin’s most damaging and possibly longest-lasting legacy is that he has played to Russia’s worst instincts. Rather than develop a sense of pride in Russia’s victory over the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin has fostered feelings of past humiliation and defeat, and subsequently a longing for retribution. Many foreign responses haven’t helped in this regard: American hawks who argue triumphantly that their old Cold War adversary is irrelevant have been of as much assistance to Putin as some of Europe’s appeasers.
Mar 02
Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else 1 Comment
“What do you spend so much time with those compensations? Do you want us to die of hunger?” – the acting prime minister Ivars Godmanis’ press secretary Edgars Vaikulis told Diena newspaper for an article published Saturday on compensations (worth of three months of their wages) that ministers and their advisers would receive after they quit.
Mar 02
EuroVision, Things Musical Comments Off
It appears Latvia’s entry into the Eurovision Song Contest in the former Soviet capital, Moscow, will be sung in Russian. Nationalists must be outraged. The song contest, they will say, will take place in the former aggressor’s capital and the least Latvia could do is to sing in its own language, or in English. I suspect if they want to win in Russia, perhaps, Russian isn’t that bad of a choice. Former Soviet republics will stand in line to give “12 points for Latvia.”
Update: The audio is already available.
Mar 02
Society Comments Off
Juris Kaža feels the same as he did back in 2000.
The ignorance, drunken helplessness, sullen passivity and psychological squalor of a substantial part of the population do not exactly brighten the “civil society” side of things, either. Many of those who have made money use TV reruns of “Dallas” as a literal guide for spending it and as a handbook in business ethics. Underneath the facade, Latvia is too often a pretty sordid and sorry sight.
What the governing institutions lack in corruption they often make up for in ineptitude.
Kaža coined a term for such a behavior – “muttsiness” from the American slang, mutt.
Mar 02
“”On the question of eastern and central Europe, there is an economic and political risk for them and for us,” he told a news conference after a summit of EU leaders in Brussels.” French President Nicholas Sarkozy during a press conference after the EU summit in Brussels on Sunday.
Us and them? I thought we were in this union together.
Mar 02
EuroVision, Things Musical Comments Off
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