Wobbling government chair

While six Latvian MP's from ruling coalition parties left for China there is an interesting situation in the Saeima. Speculations about possibility of falling the existing cabinet were spread for weeks. Right at this moment (it is Thursday morning now) the number of ruling coalition MP's is 46 while reconfigured opposition has 45 MP's. After opposition party members request the Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis has to answer to the parliament about his hundred days in the office. Diena reports that the opposition Reconciliation Centre (SC) party might bring MP with a broken leg into the parliament hall in order to increase the relative strength of the opposition. Also SC fraction head Jānis Urbanovičs does not exclude the motion of no confidence.

Such announcement sounds more like a public relations trick however. One may wonder why? Because in order to fall the wobbling chair of Ivars Godmanis there is not so much need for a MP on crutches as for someone among ruling coalition MP's to vote NAY against their own coalition representing PM. The fact is that People's Party (TP) was showing their somewhat concealed dissatisfaction with the Godmanis government since inception of the present government in last December. All the speculations about replacing coalition partners (Union of Greens & Farmers with New Era for example) only underline the latter argument. The ruling coalition MP's knew that if "their"six members of the parliament left for China their position would become fragile in the Saeima. On top of that, sociological polls show that support for the ruling coalition is irrevocably lost. Thus, if the wobbling government chair would fall today it would be the least surprising news from Latvia.

It would look like rather irresponsible act from MP's on the first instance. But the leader of the SC fraction Urbanovičs explained the need after fall of the government rather correctly- 93% of the ministers in the present cabinet are the same as in the one that fell last December. I still continue to underline my point that there is a need for snap elections in Latvia, because the existing political class has lost its legitimacy in toto.