Lativa legislative election - 4 October 2014

[Famous Mortimer]

Parties currently in parliament:

Concord Centre: Social democratic, moderate Russian party led by Riga Mayor Nils Ušakovs. I say it's a moderate Russian party because Ušakovs supports NATO membership and opposed the Russian annexation of Ukraine. It was the largest party after the last election but all other parties refused to work with it, partially because it's Russian, partially because all the other parties are conservative.

Reform Party: Formerly called Zatlers' Reform Party. A conservative anti-corruption party founded by former President Valdis Zatlers. It was the second largest party after the last election but following Zatlers surprise defeat in his presidential re-election bid, opted to give the PM post to a smaller party. Favors the status quo on the Russian question.

Unity: Conservative party led by current PM Laimdota Straujuma. Formed by the merger of several other conservative parties, mainly the New Era party and its allies. Favors the status quo on the Russian question.

National Alliance: Nationalist party, the kind of which Putin would probably bluntly describe as Nazis. Favors kicking out the Russians, making it harder to gain citizenship.

Union of Greens and Farmers: As the name suggests a coalition of an agrarian party and Latvia's green party. Both groups are, however, fairly conservative. Interestingly, this party provided both the world's first Green Prime Minister and the world's first Green President in former PM Indulis Emsis and current President Andris Bērziņš. It favors the status quo on the Russian issue.

Parties outside parliament:

Latvian Russian Union: The more radical Russian party. It used to be called For Human Rights in a United Latvia. Back then it was second largest party in the country and somewhat more moderate. Then Harmony Centre broke away leaving the radical rump behind. It opposes NATO membership and supported the annexation of Crimea.

For Latvia from the Heart: New conservative party headed by former Auditor General  Inguna Silver. Apparently it was doing very well in the polls for a little while but crashed after receiving some dubious donations.

United for Latvia: New centrist party headed by former Transportation Minister Ainārs Šlesers, formerly of the Latvian Way party, which grew out of Latvia's initial anti-Communist movement.

For Latvia's Development: New conservative party headed by former Prime Minister Einars Repše, whose old New Era party merged into Unity. This party will be helped by the fact that it will be listed first on the ballot.

The New Conservatives: New conservative party led by former Justice Minster Jānis Bordāns, who broke away from the National Alliance.

[Famous Mortimer]

Wikipedia doesn't list any polls.

I looked but all I could find is this article from March, it only reports on the top 3 parties though:

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130303/179795894/Pro-Russian-Party-Tops-Latvian-Opinion-Poll.html

Concord Centre 26
Unity 14.3
Greens and Farmers Union 9.3

[Famous Mortimer]

Another major division in Latvian politics is big business. As odd as it would seem for a country so right-wing, there's a lot of talk about "oligarchs."

Unity is anti-oligarch. The Reform Party is explicitly anti-oligarch.

The Greens and Farmers Union is seen as an oligarch party.

United for Latvia is probably an oligarch party as it replaces the Latvian Way.

For Latvia From the Heart, as I said earlier, basically collapsed when people found out how much money it was getting from various wealthy businessmen.

For a brief period before the global recession, it looked like Latvia was developing a 2 party system with the New Era party (now Unity) as the anti-oligarch conservative party and the People's Party as the pro-oligarch conservative party. The global recession did hit though. The People's Party was in power at the time and they were subsequently totally wiped out of parliament.

[Famous Mortimer]

and here's the EU results, which, as Georg said, will probably look nothing like the parliamentary results:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2014_%28Latvia%29

Unity 46% (4 seats)
National Alliance 14% (1 seat)
Social Democratic Party "Concord" 13% (1 seat)
Greens and Farmers Union 8% (1 seat)
Latvian Russian Union 6% (1 seat)

National Alliance probably did so well because they were running as Eurosceptics, they have since affiliated with the Tory's bloc.

The Concord Centre didn't run. Instead, its two competent parties ran separately. As you can see, the PES affiliated Social Democratic Party "Concord" (formerly the National Concord Party) still did pretty well. The basically communist Socialist Party of Latvia was a non-factor though.

The one member of the Greens and Farmers elected was a Farmer who sits with the UKIP group now.

The Latvian Russian Union candidate sits with the Greens though. More for the European Free Alliance than the Greens themselves though. Interestingly, the Latvian Russian Union MEP is banned from holding a seat in parliament because of her post-independence affiliation with the Communist Party. The leader of the Socialist Party of Latvia was subject to the same ban. Such bans are, however, not allowed for the EU parliament.

[Famous Mortimer]

Reading more about the United for Latvia party.

It's got some strange bedfellows.

It includes two former Prime Ministers. Aigars Kalvītis of the conservative People's Party was Prime Minister from 2004 to 2007. He resigned in a corruption scandal and was succeeded by the leader of his coalition party, Latvian Way.

That guy was Ivars Godmanis. Godmanis had also previously been Latvia's first post-Communist Prime Minister. He originally represented the Popular Front of Latvia, which was basically Latvia's Solidarity but supported by the pro-perestroika wing of the Communist Party. Then later joined Latvian Way, which included a lot of other former Popular Front people.

Their alliance isn't so weird. The People's Party and Latvian Way actually ran in an alliance in 2010 which won no seats. The People's Party disbanded before the 2011 election rather than pay its campaign. Latvian Way followed suit after they failed to win any seas running on their own.

Now what is weird though, a couple of other politicians in United for Latvia:

Jānis Straume, a former speaker of Parliament and a former leader of For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK (the predecessor of the National Alliance).

Jānis Jurkāns, Foreign Minister during Godmanis Popular Front government in the early 90s. He later founded the National Concord Party, which became and remains the core component of the Concord Center alliance.

It's got former leaders of the National Alliance and the Concord Centre in one party! The leader of the anti-Russian party and the leader of the Russian party!

[Famous Mortimer]

By the way: Why did Zatlers not want to become PM (especially as some kind of revanche)?

Might have been for continuity's sake. Since the result was allowing the incumbent Unity Prime Minister to continue in office.

Also, Latvia just has a history of small parties providing PMs even when they have bigger coalition partners (Godmanis' second term, the Green Farmer guy).

[Famous Mortimer]

http://www.latvianfacts.lv/portals/pētījumi/documents/1

Implies:
Harmony 30% +2
Unity 27% +8
Greens and Farmers 17% +5
National Alliance 10% -4
No Sirds 6% +6
Reform party 0 -21

So another centre right guvernment. Maybe witout Greens and Farmers if Unity can form a conservative coalitions with National alliance and No Sirds. But just Maybe.

No Sirds is For Latvia from the Heart.

[Famous Mortimer]

There was a debate last night. 6 parties were included: Unity, Harmony, For Latvia from the Heart, Greens and Farmers Union, National Alliance, and the Regional Alliance.

[Famous Mortimer]

They tried to pass a law banning people with Russian passports from entering the country. Unity was split. The National Alliance voted unanimously for it. The Reform Party voted unanimously against. The Greens and Farmers were split. Of course Harmony was against. It failed.

[Famous Mortimer]

No idea.

I think the Reform Party vote is interesting though. Especially in light of the terrible polling.

Is their soft line on Russians the reason for their decline or was it something else and now they're trying to appeal to Russians to get some extra votes?

[Famous Mortimer]

Both the Reuters and the Wall Street Journal ran stories about the Latvian elections where they described For Latvia From the Heart as "left-wing." Both stories included numerous other mistakes, including call Harmony "pro-Putin" so that should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, odd if they both made the same mistake.

[Famous Mortimer]

Wikipedia page has finally been updated and there's two new interesting pieces of information.

1) The Reform Party basically merged into Unity.

2) Alliance of Regions of Latvia is a coalition including the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party, Latvia's generic social democrat party.

[Famous Mortimer]

Come to think of it, given that the Unity list includes a bunch of Reform candidates, their performance, even if they hold onto second place, is pretty poor. Unity and Reform together won a little under 40% of the vote in 2011.

[Famous Mortimer]

The current coalition (Unity, Farmer/Greens, National Alliance) have 55% of the vote. They shouldn't have to bring on any more coalition partners.

Still, it's odd they ruled out For Latvia From the Heart. Maybe there was some truth to them being "left-wing"?

[Famous Mortimer]

The Guardian is now also reporting that For Latvia From the Heart is a left-wing and Russian party.

It's hard to tell if this is actually true or this is just a game of telephone with a bunch of reporters paraphrasing each others mistakes because there a very few foreign reporters actually in Latvia.

Here's an article about Inguna Sudraba's statements when she founded Hearts:

http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/legislation/?doc=91118

Very negative about the government but also very vague and not really that outrageous.

Interestingly she also says she's not close to any other party but singles out Harmony in particular as a party she is not close to.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, just like in the EU elections, Harmony Centre didn't contest (I guess they don't exist anymore?). It was just the Social Democratic Party "Harmony" (formerly the National Harmony Party). So all the crypto-Communists (ie Alfrēds Rubiks' kids) are gone from the new parliament, leaving only the moderates.

[Famous Mortimer]

Yeah, Sudraba was appointed auditor by Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis of the People's Party. There's no way she's left-wing. It's possible (just possible, I'm guessing) she criticized the government on austerity but that doesn't make her left-wing any more than Berlusconi is left-wing.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, just like in the EU elections, Harmony Centre didn't contest (I guess they don't exist anymore?). It was just the Social Democratic Party "Harmony" (formerly the National Harmony Party). So all the crypto-Communists (ie Alfrēds Rubiks' kids) are gone from the new parliament, leaving only the moderates.

Actually I take this back. Artūrs Rubiks was on the Harmony list.

[Famous Mortimer]

Found a website with some interesting profiles of parties. The one with the most new information is about the Regional Alliance:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.lsm.lv/en/article/features/guide-to-2014-saeima-elections-the-parties-part-2.a99580/

[Famous Mortimer]

Harmony lost six seats.

Politologist Janis Ikstens says Harmony's inability to affect decisions on a national level was one of the reasons why a number of voters turned away from the party.

He believes that a large number of dissatisfied voters who voted for Harmony Center last time has switched to For Latvia From the Heart, which has a  large number of Russian-speaking members.

His colleague Ojars Skudra speculates that the reason for their loss is the so-called "social democratic project" that has changed the party's image and pushed more conservative people over to parties like Greens and Farmers' Union or For Latvia From the Heart.

He adds that one of Harmony's mistakes was that it allowed the other parties to compare it to Putin's United for Russia - which signed an agreement with Harmony.

So it seems even Harmony as the only centre-left option had conservatives among their voters last time. Must be conservative Russophones voting for them as the Russian option and now switching to bi-ethnic Hearts.

Just curious, where are you finding all this commentary?

[Famous Mortimer]

It seems likely Harmony lost some votes to the Greens and Farmers as well. Their Prime Minister candidate was Aivars Lembergs, a prominent oligarch who was active in the Communist Party in Soviet times. Lembergs is actually a member of a very small third party in the Greens and Farmers alliance called For Latvia and Ventspils. Ventspils is the city Lembergs is mayor of and it has a large Russian minority. Lembergs also opposes NATO membership, a stance even Harmony doesn't take.

[Famous Mortimer]

Another difference I've come across between the anti-oligarch conservatives (Unity) and the pro-oligarch conservatives (Greens and Farmers, For Latvia From the Heart, United for Latvia) is that the oligarchs, while not caring much about ethnic Russian non-citizens, are somewhat more conciliatory towards the Russian government/Russian business interests.

The Reform Party, when it existed, seemed to occupy a unique spot where it was anti-oligarch but not anti-Russian.

[Famous Mortimer]

Apparently there are at least three different politicians named Andris Berzins in Latvia.

The President of the country who is a member of the Greens and Farmers Union.

A former Prime Minister from Latvian Way

An MP from the Greens and Farmers Union.

[Famous Mortimer]

Final result - no change of seats.

Harmony 23,0% (24)
Unity 21.9% (23)
Union of Greens and Farmers 19,5% (21)
All For Latvia-For Fatherland And Freedom/LNNK ("National Alliance") 16,6% (17)
For Latvia From The Heart 6,9% ( 8 )
Alliance of Regions of Latvia 6,7% (7)
---------------------------------
Russian Union of Latvia 1,6%
United for Latvia  1,2%
For Latvia's Development 0,9%  
New Conservative Party 0,7%
Freedom. Free from Fear, Hate and Wrath 0,2%
Growth 0,2%
Sovereignty 0,1%

Actually, although your vote percentages are right, the seats are off. Regions won 8 and Heart won 7. I'm unsure what exactly caused Regions to get more seats even though it got less votes, I would guess that it has something to do with weighing votes by region. That would especially make senses given the nature of the party.

[Famous Mortimer]

Not really to do with the national election but the Greens and Farmers MEP left the UKIP group to join the EPP, causing the UKIP group to briefly collapse, before a member of the Polish Congress of the New Right joined to save their group status.