Friday, May 16, 2008

Referendums and constitutional breaches

The final number of signatures for initiating the referendum for amendments in pension laws stands now at circa 170 000 signatures. It means that the existing Saeima session might either turn out to be the longest in Latvian history or simply lead to snap election this coming autumn. The reason behind my contemplations is the fact that both legal amendments, that were initiated by signature collection campaigns, will be given to parliament for scrutiny during the existing session. The Latvian constitution says that proposals by public motions turned into parliament should be processed within given session. The issues of the referendum campaign are serious enough to make the MP's to realize that they cannot agree on anything anymore or to put it differently that their Godfathers cannot juggle out from this issue without triggering popular referendum. Long standing head of the Saeima judicial commission Mr Kusiņš already warned in Diena abut some parliamentarians unrelenting wish to muddle the legislature away from popular referendum.

The total lack of trust of MP's and government among the electors is irrevocably lost and it can be regained only with painstaking work. Both government and MP's are not ready for that due to the row of scandals, and thus the only option left is snap elections.

The Saeima National Security Commission head Dzintars Jaundžeikars (this farmer got into parliament with a soft mandate) breech of constitution two days ago gave just another reason to call for early elections. Dzintars Jaundžeikars called the Head of Latvian public TV to closed and allegedly secretive meeting of the National Security Commission in the parliament. In the closed meeting he demanded Edgars Kots to answer questions about the contents of the Latvian TV evening news and explain why Latvian TV shows only negative news! While doing it Jaundžeikars breached Art. 100 of Satversme which clearly says that censorship is not allowed in Latvia! His colleague Gundars Daudze who happens to be the Speaker of the Saeima is as ignorant about the basic law of his represented country. After the previously mentioned scandal he suggested that the prevailing negativism should be stopped in the Latvian public TV evening news (Panorāma), and "that news could usually start with showing the good works of the government." Present Latvian nomenclature Mandarin class isn't even copying the Ukraine light model, but it is actually transplanting Mr Putin's governance style piece by piece...still sad

P.S. Rather ominously in http://www.diena.lv/ , http://www.apollo.lv/, http://www.delfi.lv/ many commentators have vocally discussed latest constitutional breaches. Among the most often asked questions was - when Latvian folks would finally get out on the streets of Riga and start demonstrating against illegally elected MP's and their corrupt politics?

2 comments:

Prokur said...

Hello, your blog is very informative, and has a lot of unique informations.
And it is partly about Riga. Maybe can you put link to my Riga Photos?

Veiko Spolitis said...

OK, no problem, and reciprocity expected then:)