Latvia

Abstract

The 2009 European Parliament (EP) elections in Latvia were held during a period of intense domestic economic and political crisis. In the autumn of 2008, the then government coalition led by Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis had been forced to turn to the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and a handful of EU member states for an emergency loan amounting to more than 35 per cent of annual GDP. Just weeks earlier, the government had nationalised Parex bank, the last major domestically owned bank, following a string of disastrous investments in Russia that had left the bank on the brink of collapse. A few months later on 13 January 2009, a major anti-government protest by 10,000 people, held in the heart of the Old Town of Riga, ended in violence between police and protesters, with attacks on the Latvian parliament building, Finance Ministry and commercial banks. President Valdis Zatlers, in a dramatic television address to the nation the following evening, gave the government an ultimatum to pass a constitutional amendment allowing voters the right to dissolve parliament between scheduled elections, formulate an economic stimulus plan and reform the structure of government by, for example, reducing the number of ministerial posts. This was all to be completed and on the statute books by 31 March 2009, or the President would initiate a process leading to the potential dissolution of parliament.