Return to square one repeated

Thats it and the Latvian 1990-1993 Premier Ivars Godmanis is back!



Last Friday I still customarily heard former physicist and Minister of Interior on the SWH Radio station as a DJ narrating rich history of rock music (he did it very profesionally BTW). Today incumbent president did not want to meddle into root causes of the present political situation and entrusted the formateur premiership role to the man of his age - Mr Ivars Godmanis. He is an old grand man of Latvian politics and he has a task to calm down Latvian Transport Supremo Ainārs Šlesers, cozy up the rest of three coalition partners, and convince the New Era (JL) party to delegate their ministers into his cabinet in order to satisfy the vision of the president - to see the new cabinet formed by five right wing parties. Not an easy task considering present circumstances.

In the meantime events throughout this year concluded with the speech of Madam ambassador on October 16 already made me to utter words that the Latvian post-independence development has returned to the square one. With Ivars Godmanis as nominated head for the prospective cabinet one can't have a better symbol for Latvia returning to the SQUARE ONE. There are Latvian neighbors in the North, South and West who learn from mistakes of others.

It somehow feels that Latvian society are masochists, because they simply love trying al the hard lessons on themselves. First, they listened to the orange and blue propaganda (colors of the TP and LPP/LC parties prior October 2006 elections) on the TV and that propaganda was deemed illegal by the Senat of the Supreme Court on November 3, 2006. Second, they started uttering disbelief about the actions of their elected representatives that culminated in demonstrations in this traditionally calm Baltic state, and now population was forced to admit that the same symbol that brought shock therapy to them in the early 1990's is forced to reconcile splinter groups of the Latvian political class. It was relatively easy for Mr Godmanis in 1991 because the Latvian society had just exited the experiment of molding the homo soveticus, but there is a lot of water that has flown into the sea since then. Mr Godmanis will soon have to realize that sixteen years have actually passed. I do not think, in case the government of Ivars Godmanis is going to be formed at all, that it could sustain its operating capacity longer than the end of next Summer. What elese one may utter here...lai sokas (Good luck!) formateur PM!!