Latvian parliamentary election, 2018

[therealriga]

Finally, nearly 4 months after the election, Latvia gets a government, a 5-party coalition headed by dual citizen Krišjānis Kariņš, a repat, who was born in Delaware. Interestingly, New Unity, who had the fewest number of seats of the 7 parties in the parliament, gets the PM role and 2 ministerial posts, with National Alliance getting 2 posts and the other parties 3.

eng.lsm.lv/article/politics/politics/latvia-gets-a-new-government-led-by-krisjanis-karins.a306967/

Commentators had preferred a 6-party coalition as the current one can be collapsed by either of the two largest parties, New Conservatives or KPV, and the latter has already started infighting.

[therealriga]

Parking this in here, since I can't be arsed to start a new thread.

Extra-ordinary municipal elections were held for Riga city council last week, a year early and resulted in the end of 11 years of rule by Harmony, the main party of the Russian minority. They'd been doing well, but suffered from fatigue in office. Their star performer, former mayor Nils Ušakovs, left to become an MEP in 2019 and the rest degenerated into corruption and in-fighting. Their allies "Honoured to serve Riga" who'd run on a joint list with them in the two previous elections broke with them to run in their own right and 4 councillors who had split from the party set up and ran unsuccessfully as "New Harmony." Honoured to serve Riga's lists included former FA Premier League footballer Marians Pahars, who played nearly 150 games for Southampton.

For the opposition, "For Development", a socially liberal centre party, became the front runner and allied with the smaller centre-left Progressives. The latter were the first party in The Baltics to have an openly gay party leader. While he's no longer leader, they're still known for being the most socially-liberal party. The "For Development" programme is here in English: attistibaipar.lv/storage/app/media/programma/Attistibai_Par_Programma_ENG.pdf

Final result was:
For Development/Progressives 18 (+10)
Harmony 12 (-5)
New Unity 10 (+6)
National Alliance/Latvian Regional Alliance 7 (=)
Honoured to serve Riga 5 (-6)
Latvian Russian Union 4 (+4)
New Conservatives 4 (-5)
New Harmony 0 (-4)

Despite voting being extended over 4 days for Covid reasons, turnout was 40%, well down on the usual 55-60%. This was blamed on Covid and disillusionment from Russian voters. On that side, the Latvian Russian Union, which is much more pro-Moscow, made a comeback, winning their first seats since the 2005-2009 council.

It's expected that a pan-Latvian coalition will be formed by For Development/Progressives, New Unity and National Alliance/Latvian Regional Alliance with New Conservatives possible as well.