RIGA: Latvia’s centre-right ruling coalition scored a fresh victory in weekend elections amid alarm over neighbouring Russia’s resurgent power, though a Kremlin-allied party backed by the ethnic Russian minority nabbed the most seats in parliament.
Although the leftist Harmony party, allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, won 24 seats in the 100-member parliament, it is set to stay in opposition as it lacks coalition partners, full official results showed yesterday.
Three parties in Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma’s centre-right governing coalition secured a sound 61-seat majority, which could rise to 69 with a fourth party possibly joining in.
Harmony actually lost ground, down from the 31 seats it won in the 2011 elections. With Europe now in its worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War, Saturday’s election was overshadowed by fears that Moscow could attempt to destabilise the Soviet-era satellite states of the Baltic.
“People wanted change but they started to be afraid in the context of Ukraine and Russia,” Arnis Kaktins from the SKDS pollsters said of the results which largely mirrored the outgoing parliament. In it, predominantly ethnic Latvian parties joined forces to form a bulwark against the Putin-allied Harmony, favoured by most of the country’s Russians who account for a quarter of the population.
“It’s a pattern we’ve had for the quarter century” since independence, University of Latvia Professor Daunis Auers said. “There is no surprise... the existing coalition has good support,” President Andris Berzins said Sunday.
Under the constitution the new parliament will open on November 4. It was not immediately clear whether Berzins would ask the 63-year-old Straujuma, a pragmatic technocrat, to form a new coalition government.
Analysts believe he could tap her Unity party colleague, outgoing EU development commissioner Andris Piebalgs, as Latvia is poised to take over the European Union’s rotating six-month presidency in January.
“It’s clear we don’t have too much time,” Berzins told LTV yesterday. “Soon it will be the first of January when we will be very active internationally.” Another possibility is Roberts Zile, an MEP and leader of the National Alliance junior coalition partner, according to University of Latvia political scientist Ivars Ijabs.
But Harmony party leader Janis Urbanovics insisted Sunday that having won the most seats, his party should be the president’s natural first choice for a potential coalition even though it lacks obvious partners.
AFP
