Sunday, April 20, 2008

Unhealthy party political games

Those of you intimately following Latvian political developments I'd like to ask you to scroll down and read the update of this Wednesday's blog entry. It would save your time, and thus, would allow me to bring out another detail of the peculiar Latvian political culture - a scam.

About month ago the former PM visited the University of Latvia political science students and bragged in front of them about being the candidate for the post of the president, but not really willing to take such a responsibility. His speech to the students is not reproduced here due to the fact that it did not contain a single line of policy proposals or his ideological stance. However, his smug presentation style and openly hostile attitude about other members of the political theatre makes me to conclude, that the present Latvian political elite is disgustingly sick. Just to bring you an example, former PM marvel in his speech was his assumption that paramount task of policy making in parliamentary democracy is to trick political competitors, because policies are made by civil servants, anyway.

Another proof for sickness of the governing elite came out during the "strawberry cake affair" of the E-minister Ina Gudele. Last week in his interview to Latvijas Avīze Gundars Bērziņš was vicariously suggesting that there is Latvian Intelligence Agency (SAB) spook in the government. Today's TV3 "Nekā personīga" had made an investigation and considered this option seriously, thus coming to conclusion that Gudele was wasted for non-compliance to the governing coalition "unwritten rules". Gudele in her Latvian TV1 interview accepted last summer the fact that SAB was interested in her work. Thus, according to TV3 , there was probably an idea to force Gudele to publicly denounce the Kažociņš candidature for the SAB post, while his candidature was slowly dragged through the corridors of the Latvian government, and morally corrupt coalition members continued their smear campaign against him.

Ina Gudele apparently did not comply with "lettish omerta", and thus, according to TV3 her exit was quickly "organized" by finding that she organized her birthday party whilst using taxpayers monies. Government cannot hide the fact, however, that Olita Magone , who was the undersecretary of the E-secretariat at the the time, was also responsible for organizing the ominous "birthday party/seminar". Ina Gudele fired Olita Magone after Corruption Prevention Bureau (KNAB) found that she was the mastermind behind the scam selling Latvian passports to shady customers mostly from the Commonwealth of the Independent States.

The payback of Magone vs. Gudele sounds understandable now, but the fact that proxy fights are used for the AAA team bigwigs, also shows how sickly childish the Latvian governance system is. As an outcome Ms Gudele not only handed in the letter of resignation but also terminated her membership in the Union of Greens and Farmers party. Another person is being offered on the altar for whims of Latvian oligarchic clans. "Honorary head" of the AAA team, Andris Šķēle cowardly pulls strings while using his university buddy Gundars Bērziņš verbal diarrhea. Another member of the triple A team, Aivars Lembegs is simply let free by Latvian judiciary, even to openly meet his "stipendiaries" in Saeima. Minigarchs still rule this country and apparently about 90 % of eligible electors find it traditional enough to accept it as a fact of life... .

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