RSSJul 27
Beyond Latvia, Wacky Neighbor to the East 1 Comment
RIGA – I have wondered who was behind the new eased restrictions on residence permits to Latvia. Apparently, it’s Rietumu Banka.
We could learn from our neighbors
Jul 12
Beyond Latvia, Economy 3 Comments
RIGA – A teacher visits her students’ parents, who are behind on the utility bills. Her job is to urge the parents to pay on their debts and help the state to balance its budget.
Tax collectors, auditors, police officers’ salaries depend on how many fines they issue during their shift.
The once-or-twice-a-year audit of a business now becomes a monthly affair.
Someone stole a t-shirt from a supermarket. Someone else called the police. The authorities sealed the premises, conducted an audit of required documents for the goods at the store. The audit revealed some goods lacked proper documentation, which resulted in the confiscation of the goods. The goods were later resold at a state-owned second-hand store. Luckily, the supermarket’s owner knew when and where those goods would be delivered, so he bought them back at a cheap price, adding his two cents to the state treasury.
Journalists are required to subscribe to the state-owned newspapers where they work. They are also required to force their friends and relatives to subscribe to the newspapers.
Belarus, where this is a common place, is in need of hard cold cash to balance its budget. Minsk is running out of options as its relationship with Moscow has recently soured. And Minsk is not keen on adhering to the EU’s democratic principles, especially ahead of the 2011 presidential elections.
The three Baltic states stand as bastions of freedom and democracy, eager and willing to share their somewhat awkward transformation experience with their neighbors. The three small countries transformed from the Soviet-era command economy into the market paradise pretty quickly. They left the Soviet Union and join NATO and EU. Often, politicians and human rights from the Baltic countries travel to georgias and ukraines of the former Soviet Union to share the experience. Other times, politicians from over there come here to learn – or just drink beer at the Dome Square, or sunbathe at the Jurmala beach.
Maybe now, it’s time for Latvia to learn to balance its budget by means other than budget cuts and tax hikes?
P.S. According to Belarus’ own statistics, 77 percent of the state-owned enterprises are unable to compete on the global market. So, relying on the economy to bring much needed revenues to the state coffers is a waste.
Good versus Evil in Kyrgyzstan
Apr 08
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.
Russia’s Preemptive Strike
Mar 09
Society, Wacky Neighbor to the East Comments Off
The city fathers decided today to ban any gathering at the Freedom Monument next Monday, citing fears of further conflicts and riots. At the same time, Russia reacted to the March 16 march more than a week before it was slated to take place.
On March 7, Russian media quoted an anonymous Russian foreign ministry source describing the Legionnaire’s Day commemoration as a “Nazi supporters march” and drew parallels between it and Holocaust denial.
And the Darwin Award Goes to
Mar 03
Beyond Latvia, Wacky Neighbor to the East 1 Comment
This guy. The saddest part is probably the last paragraph:
The celebrations continued after Isayev’s body was taken away in an ambulance, and a winter dummy was burnt in a symbolic farewell to the coldest months of the year, the paper said.
Russia’s Game
Mar 02
Beyond Latvia, Economy, Wacky Neighbor to the East Comments Off
The Economist’s Moscow bureau chief Arkady Ostrovsky warns of consequences for Russia as the reversal of fortune takes place. Will Russia be next on the list of countries that saw a public’s outrage in the time of economic collapse?
Whether the current Kremlin is prepared to open fire on its own people is unclear. Soviet hard-liners held their fire when thousands of Russians defeated the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. But back then, the kgb and its communist patrons were disoriented and weak. Putin and his regime, on the other hand, are stronger and, most importantly, have more to lose.
What’s even less clear is whether Russia’s police or military would obey the orders to shoot if they were given. The Vladivostok protests and the government’s violent response sparked an online debate in the chat room of Russia’s Interior Ministry. One post read: “Dear colleagues, Russia is at a crucial junction. An economic catastrophe is coming.… People’s patience is coming to an end.… Are we going to be the attack dogs of this regime?”
Another member replied: “I will never shoot at my own people.”
The ministry hurriedly closed down the forum, citing “technical problems.”
….
“There is nothing more misleading than to portray Russia as a liberal-minded society suppressed by a nasty bunch of former kgb agents. The uncomfortable truth is, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed boss of the Yukos oil company destroyed by the Kremlin, put it: Putin “is more liberal and more democratic than 70 percent of the population.” And unlike late Soviet leaders who inspired the contempt of the population, Putin even now remains authentically popular.
Putin’s most damaging and possibly longest-lasting legacy is that he has played to Russia’s worst instincts. Rather than develop a sense of pride in Russia’s victory over the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin has fostered feelings of past humiliation and defeat, and subsequently a longing for retribution. Many foreign responses haven’t helped in this regard: American hawks who argue triumphantly that their old Cold War adversary is irrelevant have been of as much assistance to Putin as some of Europe’s appeasers.
The 7.5 billion euro crisis of credibility
Jan 29
Beyond Latvia, Economy, Revolutions, The Godmanis government 2 Comments
RIGA – You can’t help but compare Iceland with Latvia. There are shades of similarities between the two countries – social unrest, a government lacking in credibility. To quote an excellent Edward Hugh article: “The problem is that Latvia, apart from the internal credit boom, and the consequent housing bust and real economy contraction which follows (and which all three Baltic states “enjoyed” actually stands out from its Baltic peers in that it also became something of an offshore financial centre during the boom years. That is to say, there are shades of the Iceland or UK problem in the Latvian situation.”
The International Monetary Fund in its report issued four days before the unrest – their mission was leaving Latvia on the day of the riots – stated that a key to its program success is the wide political support. (PDF file)
Clear medium-term objectives, strong political leadership and mobilization of public support will be key. Consolidations tend to be more successful when perceived by markets and the population at large as durable and sustainable. In many European countries in the 1990s, consolidations were justified by the objective of the Euro adoption, which is also the case for Latvia. On the other hand, most consolidations tend to be led by new governments and under a broad consensus. Latvia’s Parliamentary elections in 2010 represent a risk.
Clearly, the Penguin Revolution and the subsequent ultimatum by the President to the parliament adds risks to the program. Success of this program depends on wide public support which this government doesn’t have.
The IMF required a wide parliamentary support before it agreed to the loan. This is why the Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis urged the parliament to adopt wide-range of painful cuts and raise taxes at the end of last year, asking opposition parties to come on board for the country’s sake. The January 13 protests and following riots turned it all around. And, I think Godmanis realizes that. He blames the opposition parties for staging a rally. And, I suspect, it is why he didn’t want to be seen along with an opposition leader Aigars Štokenbergs in televised public debates three weeks ago.
In traditional European parliamentary democracies by and large a wide parliamentary support equal a wide support of the population. However, in Latvia, it just means an approval of a certain elite clique that stands behind political forces represented in the 100-member incredible Saeima. The parliament isn’t popular, but according to Godmanis it’s the strongest in Europe. His center-right government, however, is the least popular government in Europe, with popularity of 10 percent. It raises risks to the IMF program.
When you have an unpopular government cutting wages, raising taxes, its rating will plummet down. And I suspect we haven’t seen the end of the popular unrest. The rock concert was just a prelude to a wider protest. Already, the farmers threaten to block highways and streets in Riga in protest against government policies next Tuesday, if their demands are not met. Providing information to a lot of villages, the national radio broadcaster doesn’t have enough funding to operate, adding to the frustration. People will be laid off with unemployment reaching up to 12 percent, basically double in the matter of months, according to official estimates. Unofficially, of course, it will be much higher.
While the IMF sees an election as a liability because it ushers in an uncertain future, for the people of Latvia an election under new updated election laws appears to be a way out of this crisis of political credibility amidst economic uncertainty.
The parliament speaker Gundars Daudze this morning offered more evidence that we’re heading for snap elections. He said in a TV interview that he sees no possibility to adopt constitutional changes before March 31, the presidential deadline.
The photo above was taken by me during the summer farmer protests against the EU milk quotas
Commonalities between Moscow and Riga
Nov 24
Economy, Society, Wacky Neighbor to the East 1 Comment
RIGA – The Latvian journalist, Juris Kaža, has set up a blog devoted to the “Free Speech Emergency” in Latvia. Although I may not share Juris’ zeal, I think the situation with the freedom of speech is disheartening. It is as if the government has taken a page straight of the Kremlin rulebook. Moscow blames the crisis on the rest of the world and particularly on the Best Nation on Earth ™. It also wants to control how local media covers the crisis. It even bans the use of the word “crisis” on national TV.
So it’s no coincidence that the Russian business daily Kommersant on Saturday splashed across the front page a story about Latvian authorities trying to keep everyone’s mouth shut. With the subheading, “In Latvia, authorities started to send to jail for economic forecasts,” the article explains the story of one arrest and one criminal proceeding last week.
The newspaper, however, says “Latvia became the second country in the world that persecutes for dissemination of information about the possibility of the devaluation of a national currency and a threat of the failure of the financial system as a whole.”
The first country? Russia. Apparently, regional prosecutors are to monitor media and are not to allow publication of articles that may provoke a panic among the populace at the time of crisis. Thus, the ban on the c-word. One journalist, Pavel Verstov has already become a victim of the attack. He published a report about cases of suicide on one of the businesses of Magnitogorsk due to the economic crisis on his portal verstov.info (the site is currently down).
Sean’s Russia Blog has more:
In Sverdlovsk, the prosecutor began a check of their local media for disseminating information that might “destabilize the [economic] situation in the region.” Namely, according to Timma Bobina, the head assistant to the prosecutors office, “We were assigned to check information about media attacks via the Internet on credit organizations in Yekaterinburg. If we establish evidence that the law was broken, we can follow up with disciplinary measures, and even criminal punishment against the perpetrators.”
Sverdlovsk isn’t the only region going through such a “check.” Kommersant reports that all of Russia’s regions will look into how local media is reporting on local banks. According to prosecutors, customers in the Far East received an SMS saying that Dalkombank and Vladivostok banks were going bankrupt. In three days, clients withdrew $2.4 million rubles. In Yekaterinburg local media started a panic when it reported that Severnaya Bank, Bank 24.ru, and Ural Bank were to undergo “reconstruction and development.” Apparently the economic crisis has sent many Russians into a panic to withdrawal their savings from banks.
People running to withdraw money; government trying to control the situation; SMS sent out warning of economic collapse; it all sounds very familiar.
Why is Savickis not afraid of Russians
May 20
Translations, Wacky Neighbor to the East gas, Latvia, Russia, translation 1 Comment
RIGA – Excerpts from an interview with Juris Savickis published in Diena newspaper on May 19, 2008. A former KGB officer, Savickis is now involved in energy, chairs the Russian chapter of Itera energy company and sits on the board of Latvian gas monopoly Latvijas Gaze. Original can be found on the Diena newspaper Web site.
…
So you’re saying that 10 years later Latvia’s 70 per cent dependence on Russia gas would be okay? Is that your vision?
My vision is the same as yours – we have to find an independent source… Why am I not afraid of Russians? All our experience shows that there has never been a single moment when Russians somehow managed to influence us through gas. A monument ought to erected to Juris Savickis and Adrians Davis because we’ve managed to make sure that prices rise gradually in the last ten years when Russians decided to raise them really quickly a long time ago. Russians own 34 per cent of Latvijas Gaze. Four men from Gazprom sit on the board of Latvijas Gaze. They work as a lobby with Gazprom so the prices wouldn’t be raised because we’ve approved a Latvijas Gaze program for three years with investment and everything else. I had a thought that in the construction of a new power plant we need to involve Russians and Germans, but everyone jumped on my case for political reasons. What’s he want from those Russians? Germans are very attentive, very precise in following everything – there are many pluses there. On the other hand, Russians never neglect their property. All history of Latvijas Gaze shows that they understand it and it benefits us. Another reason why I’m not afraid of Russians is because we have [natural gas storage in] Inčukalns. Don’t underestimate it – it’s a colossal argument against Russia. 600 to 800 million cubic meters of gas goes from Inčukalns to Russia. In those regions, they only can sell gas from Inčukalns. We have 5.7 billion cubic meters of gas in Inčukalns. We can survive five years without the Russian gas.
The EU is afraid of its dependence on Russia for energy resources not because they’re worried that Russia would turn the gas off – Russia needs customers. The fear is that Russia’s energy policy is defined as a strategic weapon in formation of the foreign-policy discussions.
Those are two different questions. First one is that Russians use gas a political weapon. I absolutely cannot agree with this thesis. In my opinion everything is quite the opposite. In my view, gas is used as a political weapon against Russia.
Who uses it?
Russians haven’t violated a single agreement. Even with Ukraine and Belarus. I know everything in detail what really happened in Ukraine and Belarus.
You’re saying that Russian gas isn’t a political weapon. Why then in your interviews, you’ve said that they were worried that Latvia harms Russia? If it’s a clean business – one side harms Russia, the other trade with gas. Why are you saying that Latvian television should not have shown Putin’s System documentary before the Russian elections if it’s got no connection with politics.
It’s got no connection with gas politics.
Why then you were concerned about [a rescheduled anti-Putin documentary]Putin’s System [that was to be shown on Latvian TV on the eve of the parliamentary elections]?
Now you’ve moved into political questions about which I wouldn’t want to talk. It had no connection with politics. All agreements are fulfilled. Latvia’s relationship with Russia doesn’t stop with only gas and electricity. There are sprats and hell knows what else – then starts politics. I wasn’t shocked about the documentary but I had a few questions. For example, why did you make a ruckus about the question who canceled the film? I have another question – why weren’t you asking who scheduled the film in that time for our taxpayers money?
Latvian Constitution says that censorship is forbidden.
All people who scheduled that film – they were thinking what they were doing?
Yes, and they know that Latvia is not part of Russia and here censorship doesn’t work.
Why wasn’t the film shown a month earlier?
Why not show it on the same day? It’s timely.
Okay, we’re a free people. Why wouldn’t we now show a film about Clinton and Lewiski?
If you have a specific film, offer it to Latvian television and they’ll show it with pleasure.
No, they won’t.
Why not?
Because they won’t. It’s the same as with that monument – why did Estonia have to move the [Bronze Soldier] Alyosha near May 9? Do it in September, October. Your neighbor urinates on the steps when another is celebrating his birthday. but he pees on his own steps, not the neighbor’s, because he’s afraid to go near the other steps. That’s the level we’re talking about here.
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