Latvian vote may mean minority government

The pro-Russia Harmony Centre looks set to win the largest number of votes in Latvia’s snap election, held Saturday. But the refusal of other parties to talk to it may mean the country is ruled by a minority government.

Reuters/Ints Kalnins

Opinion polls showed the Harmony Centre winning 21 per cent of the vote, ahead of the Unity and Reform parties, both at 15 per cent.

In 20 years of independence no party with majority support from ethnic Russians has had a role in government.

Latvia’s economy is expected to grow as much as five per cent this year, after shrinking 25 per cent.

But unemployment stands at 16 per cent and tens of thousands have left to find jobs abroad.

Its population is 2.2 million, 27 per cent of them ethnic Russians.

But the expected runners-up have said they will not negotiate with the Harmony Centre while it refuses to accept that Russia’s presence in Latvia and other Baltic countries after 1945 was an “occupation”.

The party also wants to revise the terms of a 7.5-billion-euro bailout agreed with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund after the economic crisis that hit the country in 2008.

Nor will Unity and Reform talk to what they call “oligarch parties”, such as the Union of Greens and Farmers, credited with about five per cent support.

"One of the key issues for this parliamentary election is to ensure that those parties that have voted in the oligarchs' interests in the last parliament will not get a majority in this one, and we think it's within reach," Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said on Saturday.

Saturday’s election comes just a year after an election that returned the current leadership to power.

In May then-president Valdis Zatlers dissolved parliament after MPs interfered with an inquiry into high-level corruption, a move backed by 94 per cent of voters in a subsequent referendum.

They hit back by refusing to reelect him in June, choosing challenger Andris Berzins instead.

Berzins says he will launch formal talks to form a new government on 28 September.

Latvia's main political parties are:

• The Harmony Centre – left-wing party led by Riga mayor Nils Usakovs with links to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, which gains most of its support from the Russian minority.
• Unity – centre-right party formed by Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, bringing together founded as an electoral alliance of the New Era Party, the Civic Union and the Society for Other Politics.
• Reform Party – anti-corruption party formed by ex-president Valdis Zatlers when he was thrown out of office.
• Union of Greens and Farmers – right-wing alliance of Latvian Farmers' Union and the Green Party of Latvia, accused of being pro-oligarch.
• Nationalist Alliance – Latvian nationalist, founded as an electoral alliance in 2010 by national-conservative For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK and the far right All For Latvia!