Divided over corruption and Russia

The battle with the oligarchy

Politically, Latvia is undergoing an existential crisis – one whose central question might be phrased: “To collaborate, or not to collaborate.” At issue is a tight clique of ultra-wealthy businessmen/politicians who wield a choke-hold on state institutions yet are virtually immune from criminal responsibility. Latvians call them “the oligarchs”, and when their country entered a steep recession – Europe's worst – in 2008, they knew whom to blame. 

While there are numerous oligarchs, public ire has focused on three: Andris Škele, Ainars Šlesers, and Aivars Lembergs. Among their questionable activities in recent years, they are alleged to have exerted their parliamentary sway to sack a popular anti-corruption chief and to block the re-election of the top prosecutor simply because the two men had the gall to tackle high-level corruption.

So last May, when lawmakers barred investigators from searching Šlesers's home as part of a new probe into graft, the then president Valdis Zatlers decided enough was enough. He dissolved parliament and voters backed him overwhelmingly in a referendum. (Lawmakers punished Zatlers a week later by not re-electing him.)

Not surprisingly, the platform of Zatlers's Reform Party boils down to ending Latvia's political culture of collaboration with the oligarchs. And it appears to be working. Škele's People's Party disbanded itself this summer, while the rating of Šlesers's Latvia's First/Latvia's Way coalition is in the gutter.
That leaves Lembergs, but vanquishing the mayor of the port town Ventspils and backer of the Greens and Farmers Union will not be easy. He has a solid core of supporters, including former party member Andris Berzinš, who is now president.