RSSPower and Money Rule Latvian Politics
Apr 13
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A far-reaching corruption scandal surfaced in a Wednesday’s political TV show “What’s going on in Latvia?” And the details of the scandal continue to emerge.
TV journalist Janis Domburs showed a secret deal signed between a political party and an economic group in the late 1990s. The text of the document was later published on the Delfi.lv Web site, with main newspapers following suit only on Friday.
The document established rules for cooperation between a political party, identified only as ‘S’, and an economic group known as ‘V’.
It included an agreement for the media controlled by the economic group, including the NRA newspaper, to only publish reports favorable to the political party.
The economic groups were identified as the Ventspils businessmen, including the city mayor Aivars Lembers. In return, the business interests undertook to finance ‘projects’ initiated by Latvian Social Democratic Workers party, identified by its former leader as the political party in the document.
With no remorse on display regarding the secret agreement, Juris Bojars was rather pragmatic about the agreement.
“No political party can exist without a sponsor,” he said in a TV interview.
This statement goes to the core of the problem of political corruption in the country. One could say it’s a remainder of the Soviet psyche, but blaming 50 years of occupation is not going to accomplish anything but to give impunity with which politicians like Bojars.
Latvijas Cels, former Jauna Partija have admitted to having a similar agreement with Lembergs.
Overall public is fed up, or at least it ought to be fed up with corrupt politicians. Perhaps, this will drive people to polling stations to sign up for a referendum.
The scandal is seen in the context of a larger corruption allegations of the recent months, including an arrest of Lembergs.
‘The politically criminal news of recent months… raise the question whether similar deals were not signed between other political forces then or at other times,’ Domburs wrote on Delfi.lv.
Three parties in Latvia’s current ruling coalition are widely held to be dominated by “oligarchs” – businessmen, Lembergs among them, who are thought to use their money to dominate politics, and their political power to protect their economic interests.
And in a recent showdown between the President and the Parliament over national security laws, allowing the government to take control of national security, Latvia’s president Vaira Vike-Freiberga said that it would leave the government open to influence of oligarchs.
Lembergs was charged with large-scale corruption and jailed pending trial. He has long maintained ties with Latvia’s political elite, and is alleged to be the secret owner of a large part of the Ventspils oil group.
On the day that Lembergs was arrested last month, a phone-in poll to another edition of Domburs’ show revealed that 80 per cent of the almost 12,000 viewers who called in believed that the oligarchs’ power was a threat to Latvian democracy.
Overall, though, corruption goes deeper into the society. While 12,000 viewers may have been outraged over Lembregs’ allegation of corruption, most people cheat to survive, or to gain more money.
For a trolleybus conductor I met on my recent trip to Latvia, this was a matter of survival. Instead of a normal fee, she charged me less without giving me a ticket. That means, she will not be accountable for the money she had received and can take it as an extra pay.
If democracy is a rule of the people, the people get the government they deserve. If they decide to rise up in hordes and flock to the polls to clean up the government, maybe then, the government will be less corrupt.
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