Messy Latvian party political culture

Four years have passed since the 2006 parliamentary elections in Latvia. Even though the Supreme Court of Latvia ruled that election campaign was not truly legitimate, other Latvian courts still have not decided whether major culprits - People's & Latvian First and Latvian Way Union parties - are liable to repay illegally spent EUR 2 mlj. back into state treasury. Since the events four years back Latvian political environment has transformed and literally non of the political parties participate in the 2010 elections, even though almost all the same politicians would fight for the survival.

Purists would object me telling that there are still political parties in Latvia. Indeed there are circa 52 political parties/unions (State Company Registry (UR) data three months ago) in Latvia. But from thirteen party lists that are running for parliament in upcoming elections Cristian Democrats, and motley of strangely named parties like ''Daugave for Latvia'', ''People's Control'', ''Made in Latvia'', and ''For Presidential Republic'' are nowhere near the mandatory 5% threshold to enter the Saeima (parliament)... . Also, and even more importantly, only two (Union of Greens and Farmers and For Human Rights in Latvia) of the thirteen contenders for 100 seats in the parliament are founded prior 2006. The system is volatile and unfortunately classical political parties - conservatives, liberals, social democrats, greens - are not institutionalized in Latvia. Thus one may conclude that the party political system has pretty much returned to square one. Reasons for the party political system not being institutionalized are ample, and about those reasons there would be another blog entry coming soon.

In the following four charts I have used the ''Latvijas Fakti'', SKDS, and www.ir.lv data in order to roughly show alternations of support for the Latvian political parties/unions from January 2007 - August 2010.

SUPPORT for LV POLITICAL UNIONS 02.2008 - 07.2010



SUPPORT for LV POLITICAL PARTIES 01.2007 - 07.2010



SUPPORT for LV POLITICAL UNIONS July-August 2010 & POSSIBLE NUMBER OF SEATS IN THE PARLIAMENT



PERCENTAGE OF UNDECIDED VOTERS, THOSE WILLING TO VOTE FOR GOVERNMENT PARTIES, AND ALL OTHER POLITICAL PARTIES 01.2007 - 07.2010