Archive for April, 2010

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2010
04.23

Posted in Parliament, Politics | Comments Off

RIGA – Fearing their impotence after the October elections, two political heavyweights have announced this week they were consolidating forces. The former Prime Minsiter, Andris Šķēle and the Prime Minister Wanna-Be Ainārs Šlesers are going to be on a single ticket. The new bloc, temporary nicknamed (A+Š)2 will counterweight the Dombrovskis’ Unity movement.

To me, it is clearly a marriage of convenience. Šlesers needs a rural vote to gain seats in the 100-member unicameral parliament. He did fairly well in Rīga last year in the municipal elections, but his party – which attracts both Latvian and Russian votes – has no network outside large cities. Šķēle needs to keep his political project, known as the People’s Party, afloat in spite of the abysmal ratings.

I couldn’t help but compare this duo to the Putin-Medvedev tandem. The two leaders could hand-pick one to be the prime minister after the election, and next year – when President Zatlers comes up for a vote in parliament – vote into the Rīga Castle another leader. Their supporters often say publicly that Latvia is in need of a strong leader; it is in need of a Great Leader. Latvia needs its own Putin, they say.

“Latvia’s most significant problem until now was a lack of personalities,” Ēriks Stendenieks was quoted by Diena. “Andris Šķēle and Ainārs Šlesers – however controversial they would not be – in synergy can give more than lukewarm people. Those who can predict the future events further than two weeks ahead are either fools or charlatans.

Speaking to journalists in the parliament, Šlesers was as verbose as usual, chiding journalists for asking difficult questions. Often seemingly contradicting himself.

“You don’t have to talk about the past,” he said. “You have to talk about the future.” At the same time, he pointed to experience of his party members, like Andris Bērziņš, who had served as the prime minister in the 2000s.

Surely, Šlesers wouldn’t want to talk about the past. The man penned the now infamous editorial in Diena back in 2004, urging to push the pedal to the metal. The pro-Šlesers movement with the cynical name “For a Better Latvia” recently pledged to raise an average salary in the country to € 3,000, which some economists called it practically impossible (the text is behind registration). It would lead the country to the worse overheating as the so-called “fat years” of boom. It would mean that “the economy should grow equally fast and the annual growth rate of GDP would thus have to be 16.3%”

“As I understand the organization would like to see Latvia develop into the best small economy in Europe. It is a laudable goal but rings very hollow with these ‘pie in the sky’ “projections”. Getting the numbers right would be a good start. “

As the fruits of their past labor have now become a reality, the newly formed union faces a tough sell to the undecided voters. So, instead, they’re offering pie in the sky, feeding the electorate with empty promises.

The election season is upon us.

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Anniversary Crashed Down


2010
04.21

Posted in History, The Dombrovskis government | 1 Comment »

RIGA – Most things in Latvia seem to occur randomly and often unexpectedly. Take, for example, last week’s failed re-election of the prosecutor general Jānis Maizītis, whose term in office expires on May 11. The political establishment had said they pulled their support behind the only candidate for the prosecutor general. On TV hours before the vote, political leaders one by one said they would vote to re-elect Maizītis, who has been serving his two five-year terms as the prosecutor general since 2000.

Instead, they pulled “Et, tu, Brute?”

It came as a surprise to Maizītis himself, who, following the vote, issued a thinly-veiled threat to make reveal dirt on a few members of parliament. It could serve as a ticking time bomb ahead of the October election.

So, in Latvia, one can never be sure of a political game’s outcome. Words often don’t mean anything. In spite of the progress made so far, risks to the IMF-led three-year loan program remain very much real. Even though one opposition party offered its support to the government, the risks to the stability of the minority government of Valdis Dombrovskis remain high.

It would take a fortune-teller to predict how it will ends. But in case of Latvia, even if you thought one can make a reasonable expectation that a certain event may occur, it still comes as a surprise, forcing Latvia to perpetually react to events rather than prepare for them.

For example, in 13 days, Latvia will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the restoration of its independence from the Soviet Union. The government plans a series of events celebrating the event as the democracy in today’s Latvia has surpassed our first democratic experiment before the Second World War.

The anniversary of the restoration of independence came as surprise to two young Latvian girls on the street. Seeing streets adorned with national colors, the girls became confused.

“What’s the date today?”

“April 21″

“What are we celebrating?”

I helped them out.

“Ah, sorry. We live in ignorance,” they said.

Apparently, so did the government. The anniversary came as a surprise to the cash-strapped Latvia plans to spend (the link is in Latvian) almost 240,000 lats (US$480,000) on the festivities from the fund for “the unforeseen events” in the state budget. Or a rainy day fund. Any one with a calendar could point to May 4 and tell you that it is the anniversary of the restoration of Latvia’s independence (This video of the Singing Revolution is here). But apparently, the public officials couldn’t account for it in within their existing budgets.

Better yet, the fund has become the cash cow for ministries. Last year, the government even paid out salaries from the fund. Out of original 16.4 million lats earmarked for the fund this year, the government has already spent 9.95 million lats. And it’s only April.

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Good versus Evil in Kyrgyzstan


2010
04.08

Posted in Beyond Latvia | 3 Comments »

RIGA – “Which ones are ours?” asked a friend of a friend in an online chat yesterday. “For whom should we root?”

Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek may be 3,850 km away from the capital of Latvia, but it doesn’t stop a group of us from following what can only be described as the civil war between the government and the opposition, the drunks and the sober, the looters and the angry shop owners. We have a mutual friend who is stuck in his fifth-floor Bishkek apartment, worrying about his Friday’s flight back to Riga.

Will the airport be open? Will they let flights out? Should he be calling the German consulate that would be responsible for getting EU citizens out in case of emergency? He is one of the 13 Latvian nationals in the Kyrgyz capital. And thirteen is not a lucky number.

The inaugural quote above reflects a firm belief that this world is divided between Good and Evil. It is as if the world is a black-and-white fairy tale, or a film featuring poorly-developed characters. We’re supposed to have the good guys, who would create the order in the country and the bad guys that only care for themselves. Once we figure out who is who, we can pull our wholehearted support behind them.

We saw that during the August 2008 “warette” between Georgia and Russia. We saw it during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Even the 2005 Revolution in that same Bishkek brought the current president Kurmanbek Bakiyev to power. The good guy turned sour.

Perhaps, this is why Russians espouse an interpretation of World War II that features Nazi Germany as pure inexcusable Evil, while the good side’s crimes, or mishaps, can be justified simply because they are the Good Guys. Perhaps, this is why Glenn Beck is so stinkin’ popular.

Once you figure out who is who, the news narrative is much easier to write if it’s a battle between democracy fighters vs. dictatorship terrorists. A people rising up against a government avoids any complexities of an explanation of the nuances. And it justifies the drive of the people to violence, even though some just want free booze, which is why they looted a liquor store.

So, it explains why Latvia took a conciliatory tone.

“I believe that violence is not justified in any situation,” Latvia’s foreign minister Maris Riekstins said in a released statement. “The potential for a dialogue between the government and the opposition is by no means exhausted, and I call upon both sides to make maximum use of that,” he said.

We come from a country that staged the Singing Revolution and that have held subdued protests against the government’s austerity measures. With the exception of the 2008 January riots in Riga and the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn, the Baltics have seen little public violence.