Thu, 18 June 11:00 2009

Euro-elections: the day after in Latvia

Earlier this month, less than half of the European Union’s enfranchised population – roughly 43 per cent – bothered to cast their votes for the politicians who will represent them at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
There was a noticeable drift towards the Right and because there must be room for every tendency in a democracy, the Union for Europe of the Nations, which encompasses neo-fascist as well as centre-right groups, increased its share of the poll.
So, too, did Britain’s eurosceptic UKIP party, with 13 seats in Strasbourg and two for the neo-fascist BNP.
Despite losing votes compared to the 2004 Euro-elections, the governing parties in France and Germany escaped a punishment vote from an apathetic public that stayed at home in record numbers rather than take time out to go to a polling station. Only in Denmark and Latvia was there an increase with 51 per cent and 53 per cent turnouts respectively.
Latvia is more gravely affected by the economic crisis than any other EU country and results in the Baltic state (population 2.3 million) favoured ethnic Russian candidates. Alfred Rubiks, a former Communist party chief imprisoned for six years after an unsuccessful coup in August 1991 to prevent the country from leaving the Soviet Union, will occupy a Strasbourg parliamentary seat after his Harmony party won 20 per cent of the poll. This doubled predictions and, combined with another pro-Russia party, which obtained 10 per cent of the vote, indicates that their appeal is no longer limited to ethnic Russians. Equally important to Latvian voters on June 7 were the simultaneous local elections where Harmony received 30 per cent of votes.
Latvia’s economy grew by 50 per cent after joining the EU in 2004, but it is currently the worst-performing with unemployment increasing at a rate of 50 per cent and an economy expected to contract by 12 per cent this year. With the national currency - the lat - pegged to the euro, Latvia needed an International Monetary Fund bailout of 7.5 billion euros last December, and social unrest prompted by the financial crisis led to the centre-right government’s fall in February 2009.
The Euro-election results do not bode well for Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, himself an MEP brought in last March to head a coalition government after Ivars Godmanis’ resignation.
The promised land of the EU does not exactly break its promises but as Latvia has now found out, the grass that looks so green from a distance turns out to be less succulent when viewed in close-up during a global recession.

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