Thursday, April 15, 2010

Election process of the Latvian Prosecutor General and political ripples

This morning majority of Latvian MP's acted like clowns again. Instead of promises given by the heads of all political fractions in Latvian Saeima to vote for the incumbent Prosecutor General Janis Maizitis, this morning with 45 YEA and 47 NAY votes Janis Maizitis was not reelected for his third consecutive term. The present parliament is extremely fractional and 58 MEP's decided to vote with closed bulletins. The major culprit appears to be now the People's Party (PP) and Harmony Centre Party (HC), because differently from Union of Greens and Farmers and Latvian First and Latvian Way Party Union (LFLWU) who's members had free voting regime, PP yesterday promised to support incumbent prosecutor general.

Because the voting took place with closed bulletins it is rather impossible to discover who voted for and who against. It is useless to start investigation here because majority of the present parliament are simply crippled to perform their tasks due to intimate relations with their God-fathers... . The corrupt deals of God-fathers was supposed to untangle the same Prosecutor General who was not reelected this morning... .

According to Latvian Constitution it is the Head of the Supreme Court Mr Bickovics who nominates the name of the Prosecutor General. Mr Bickovics has not made official statements so far, but Mr Maizitis announced that he would be ready to continue his third consecutive term if he would be nominated and parliament would vote differently this time... .

Changes of election law and riddance of ill famous ''election locomotives'' that allowed about half of totally incompetent incumbent MP's to be dragged into parliament and the economic crisis has transformed the traditional political networks. It makes the political system sickly now, and it is clear that without certain further innovations in election law and the founding principles of internal revenue service Latvian democracy is insustainable. Creation of new political unions were first symptoms about remake of the Latvian political system. Today's voting officially ringed the electoral campaign in and it is essential now not only to have a new and competent prosecutor general, but also to have the stipulations in party financing law and finally pass the mandatory tax and property declaration, which is a way tooo long overdue!

3 comments:

TRex said...

In fairness the gentleman has been on the job for 10 years. Has the law enforcement services seen any increase in manpower and training since Prosecutor General Janis Maizitis criticisms back in 2004? How effective was he really allowed to be in this position? How effective will the next person to fill the position be?

Secret ballots should not be allowed in a democracy, especially a system as deeply corrupt and incompetent as Latvia’s but I really don’t see the Prosecutors office accomplishing much. And of course there are deep seated reasons behind that.

Veiko Spolitis said...

I agree with you! Effectiveness of Mr Maizitis tenure was very much prevented by the questionable quality of the lawmaking branch....and probably precautionary nature of Mr Maizitis himself. However, the WAY the first round of voting was taking place is unacceptable in democracies! And that is the reason why I signed the petition - http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/partiesiskuvalsti/

TRex said...

Thanks for posting that link. I hope Latvians take ownership of the system by using whatever legal means available but it is a deeply flawed system at present.