VVF's new job

Four months ago, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga finished her second term as the Latvian president (probably, she was the best Latvian president ever and most of Latvia was sad to see her go). But VVF did not stay retired for long.

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is now the new president of European Research Area Board, a group of experts that will advise EU on scientific research and make policy suggestions to European Commission. It's an advisory role but an important one.

While looking for information on her new appointment, I came across similarly-named
European Research Council which distributes EU funding for research. Their website has the preliminary results of their first grant competition. Latvia did not do well at all and, even in terms of submitted grant proposals, we were the last.

Latvian governments did underfund research quite badly for 12-15 years (from Godmanis government in early 1990s until a few years ago) and we are still seeing the consequences of that. Things have been changing for better in the last few years (I hope the next government continues that) but it will take a while to undo the damage from 12-15 years of underfunding.

Making fun of the president

There are quite a few parody websites making fun of the new Latvian president Valdis Zatlers:

zatlers.blogspot.com
www.zatlers.lv
www.valdiszatlers.com

"Zatlers blog" on blogspot was the first one that cropped up, the next day after Valdis Zatlers was nominated as a candidate for being the Latvian president. The people running it managed to pass it off as "Zatlers' official campaign website" to several newspapers, before the journalists realized it was a parody.

It has grown more and more intricate since then. The blog now purports to detail the life of a fictional character, "Zaldis Vatlers" who is "the chief resident of Latvia". And it's supposedly run by "Vatlera Draugu Kopa (VDK)" which translates to "Vatlers' Group of Friends" but, most importantly, abbreviates to VDK... which is also the Latvian abbreviation for KGB. The site is non-sensical but funny... those who know Latvian can go and read it.

It's quite a change from our past president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. She was an authority figure who was almost always right. VVF was to be worshipped, rather than made fun of. Zatlers looks different:


Zatlers has his flows. His scandal with gifts that he received as a doctor. The scandal has died out by now and opinion polls say that only 17% of Latvians have a negative opinion of Zatlers. The remaining 83% either approve of him or are going to wait and see how he turns out as the president. Nevertheless, I doubt he will ever become Vike-Freiberga-like "moral authority" figure. Zatlers will be like most of our politicians - to be made fun of, even if he ends up being relatively popular.

Sun flowers for the president

Before the World War II, Latvian fortune-teller Eizens Finks made a prophecy about the future of his country. I'm not sure about the exact wording but it involved a female leader leading Latvia into a new age of prosperity.

It was a bold prediction for that time. In the first three elections of 1920s Latvia, no female candidate was elected to the parliament. In the fourth election, there was exactly one women elected, out of 100 members of the parliament.

I don't believe in fortune-telling. But it seems that Finks' prophesy has come true, by a strange turn of fate. Eight years ago, in 1999, a deadlocked Latvian parliament chose a vaguely known academic, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, as the compromise candidate for the presidency. Yesterday was the last day of her second term as the president.

Vaira Vike-Freiberga has surpassed all expectations that we had about her. (OK, the public was very skeptical and cynical about politicians in 1999 and we might not had much expectations at all... But if we had had expectations in 1999, she would have still surpassed them!)

VairaVike-Freiberga believed in Latvia, at the time when many people did not. As she said in her second inauguration speech:

Every nation has its uniqueness, its beauty and its special value and we can say that about our own Latvia as well.

We are rich in our diversity, we are rich in everything that we have experienced in both sunny days and also dark and dreary days.

We can all shape future in such a way that we will be proud of.

As the president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga was the most passionate advocate of Latvia that we had ever seen. She was great at explaining our history and our aspirations to the world outside Latvia. And, I think, it was her belief in Latvia that made her such an outstanding advocate for our country.

We often complain about our politicians wasting too much money for trips abroad. Well, Vike-Freiberga went to 180 visits abroad in 8 years (probably more than anyone else) and nobody complained. Because we knew that she was there to articulate Latvian causes.

Latvia has gone a long way in 8 years of Vaira Vike-Freiberga presidency. In 1999, we had to argue to be included into the expansion of European Union. Now, the borders between Latvia and the EU have essentially disappeared. Our economy has grown tremendously and, even if we fall back due to the present economic bubble crashing... we are not going to fall back to where we were in 1999.

The standards for political integrity have also grown. It may be lost in the daily arguments about corruption scandals but Latvia is certainly moving forward. As Vaira Vike-Freiberga said in her last interview as the president:

Our country still has many people whose ethics standards don't match what we would like to see and we should continue the fight against that. It's not a one-day task, we won't be able to check "corruption has been eliminated" on our daily planner in one day.

But I am optimistic that our country can move forward.

And she has certainly done a lot to set higher standards for our politicians! Vaira Vike-Freiberga has promised to stay around and continue her work as an advocate for Latvian causes abroad. As she said in a TV interview yesterday, "I am saying bye as the president but I'll say see-you-later as Vaira Vike-Freiberga".

Note: The title of this post refers to the thank-you event "Sun Flowers for the President" organized one of our newspapers week ago. Here is a photo report from the event.

Latvia's forgotten referendum

Tomorrow, Latvians will vote in a referendum. I haven't been writing about it much because the whole matter leaves me perplexed.

First, the history. On March 1, our parliament passed the amendments to two laws: The National Security Law and The Law on Security Institutions. Immediately after, the president Vaira Vike-Freiberga invoked a previously unused clause of Latvian constitution that lets the president to suspend a newly passed law for two months. If during the two months, a sufficient number of signatures (at least 10% of Latvian citizens with the right to vote) is gathered, a referendum is held.

The president accused the "oligarchs" in trying to gain the control over the security institutions and said that she was worried about NATO secrets falling into the wrong hands. That was enough to get signatures of 14.41% of Latvian citizens, resulting in tomorrow's referendum. Here is a conversation over the phone that I had with one of my friends who signed:

FRIEND: I signed the referendum petition today.
ME: Did you read what the controversial laws actually say?
FRIEND: No, but I've heard they are really bad.

This was fairly typical. I tried reading them and it left me perplexed. This is one law and this is the other one (both links in Latvian). The most serious change appears to be adding this sentence to the existing law:

For the parliamentary oversight, the members of National Security Committee of Saeima (the Latvian parliament), together with persons who have been authorized by the committee and who possess the top category clearance for access to national secrets, have the right to conduct examinations of national security institutions, to access the necessary information and documents, except for information about secret sources, to interview employees of national security institutions, to verify the legality and the necessity of conducted intelligence and countrintelligence operations.

I'm wondering what are the standards of other countries on this. Do the parliaments usually have the oversight or not? Unfortunately, the Latvian debate on the laws never got to this question.

The debate was just mudslinging about the evil conspiracy to gain access to the state secrets. Well, if we can't trust members of parliament who have top category security clearance, we might be in deep trouble anyway. (Of course, that assumes that Latvian security services actually possess some valuable information and I'm not sure about that, either.) On the other side, I generally trust Vike-Freiberga when she makes a claim that something is wrong in a major way...

As I said twice before, I am perplexed. But the number of signatures was enough for a referendum. To avoid being humiliated by a referendum loss, the government invalidated the two laws before the referendum. So, now we have a referendum on whether to abolish two laws that have already been abolished.

The people who hate the current government will regard this as a chance to show that they hate it, by voting the abolish the laws. The president has called on everyone else to vote. What comes out of it and what is the big picture... who knows?

UPDATE (7/8): The referendum is now over. According to preliminary results, about 23% of eligible voters showed up to vote. (For comparison, the turnout in the last parliamentary election was 61.88%.) Out of those who voted, 95.7% supported repealing one of two laws and 95.8% supported repealing the other.

Because of the low turnout, the result is not legally binding. This means that the two laws have only been repealed once (by the parliament) instead of being repealed twice (by both parliament and referendum).

New Era Party (which is in opposition) believes that the referendum's result shows that the government lacks popular trust. They've called for resignation of prime minister. Well, New Era Party seems to be using every chance to call for someone's resignation this summer...

Return to normalcy

Edward Lucas has an interesting column in the Economist. I think the facts are spot-on but I would like to argue about the conclusions.

Lucas starts by contrasting our president-elect Valdis Zatlers with our outgoing president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga:

Optimists hope that Valdis Zatlers, an orthopaedic surgeon, will grow into his new job as Latvia's president. But even his doughtiest supporters doubt that he will fill the exquisite shoes of his predecessor, Vaire Vike-Freiberga, a steely-minded émigré polyglot who ushered her small Baltic country into both the European Union and NATO.

Then, he observes that this is a part of a bigger trend. The previous generation of Eastern European leaders had many big figures:

Lech Walesa of Poland and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel remain world famous. Poland's Aleksander Kwasniewski was widely admired abroad for his diplomatic skills. Reformist politicians such as Estonia's Mart Laar, Russia's Yegor Gaidar and Slovakia's Mikulas Dzurinda wowed the policy wonks with their zealous embrace of flat taxes and free-marketry.

Now, it's different. Only Russia's Vladimir Putin and Estonia's Toomas Hedrik Ilves qualify as "big figures", according to Lucas. As for the rest:

A lot more typical are such political leaders as Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico, or Hungary's Ferenc Gyurcsany: wily political operators with good business ties and a populist touch.

I think this trend is a part of Eastern Europe returning to normalcy, after the Soviet oppression and the chaos of first post-Soviet years.

Great leaders often emerge as a response to great challenges. When Vaira Vike-Freiberga came to power in 1999, Latvia had to convince the Western world that our country is a part of it. During her presidency, Latvia succeeded in that. Latvia became a member of the European Union and NATO.

The same thing happened in other Central European countries. Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel were symbols of Poland and Czech Republic rejecting Communism and aspiring towards the same values as Western Europe. Now, the values that Walesa and Havel fought for are universally accepted in their countries. And, once something is universally accepted, there is no need for a visionary leader articulating that.

Today, the main challenge for the countries that joined European Union in 2004 is ensuring competent day-to-day management. We are not making a fundamental choice between democracy and totalitarianism, or free-market and centralized economy any more. Those choices have been made long ago.

As a result, there is not much space for visionary leaders any more. Businessmen and managers are taking their place. The main issues in the past Latvian election were: "Who is the most competent?" and "Who is the least corrupt?".

I hope this trend towards normalcy continues. I prefer to live in a world where proper enviromental standards for new housing developments are the most burning political issue, rather than in a world were Latvia has to worry about Russian military buildups. Of course, that depends on whether Russia is heading towards normalcy as well, and I am not sure of that at all...

Latvian presidential election, post scriptum

Some final thoughts on the presidential election:

1. Most intense election, ever. This was the most heated presidential election, since Latvia regained independence in 1991. The Latvian president is chosen by the parliament and, in previous 4 elections, people did not even try to influence the parliament. As a result, we got two presidents: Guntis Ulmanis (in 1993) and Vaira Vike-Freiberga (in 1999) who would not have won a popular vote at the time when they were first elected. (Vike-Freiberga eventually became very popular. But, when she was first elected, most Latvians only vaguely knew who she was.) And hardly anyone was objecting to that.
   
   This time was different. We had, for the first time, TV debates between the candidates. Numerous organizations expressed their opinions on candidates. Everyone had an opinion. And a lot of people were very disappointed, when the parliament chose a less popular coalition candidate (Valdis Zatlers) over a more popular opposition candidate (Aivars Endzins).


2. Zatlers is a puzzle. Our new president, Valdis Zatlers, was a complete unknown 9 days before the election. We still don't know his positions on many issues nor how independent he would be as the president. On the positive side, people who know him as a doctor say good things about Zatlers and it seems that our outgoing president Vaira Vike-Freiberga (whose judgement I trust) preferred him over the other candidate. On the negative side, a lot of people are very concerned by the way how Zatlers became coalition's candidate and whether he was chosen for loyalty more than for competence. (And this is a very soft way to word their concerns.)
   
   I hope Zatlers turns out fine! But depending on which article I read, my expectations about Zatlers go from cautiously optimistic to extremely worried and back.


3. Zatlers is a puzzle, even to those who selected him. If someone in the ruling 4-party coalition selected Zatlers in hope they could easily manipulate him, they have made a risky choice. With non-politician candidates like him, it's difficult to predict how they will behave after becoming the president. Recent Latvian history has previous examples of non-politicians ascending to top government positions in a lightning speed, like Zatlers. More than once, these people turned out to be much more independent and strong-willed than expected.
   
   The second way how this choice could backfire on the coalition is if Zatlers turns into a PR disaster that keeps saying the wrong things. In this case, they'll be stuck with him for the next 4 years and that will certainly affect the next parliamentary election. Again, if they had chosen someone who was a public figure before, it would be predictable how he will behave in the spotlight of the media. With Zatlers, it's not.

Dark horses in Latvian politics

Valdis Zatlers is not the first surprise candidate for a top political position in Latvia. Vaira Vike-Freiberga was only vaguely known for most Latvians, before she became the president in 1999. And I didn't know who Andris Skele was when he was chosen as the prime minister in 1995, after a deadlock in two-month long negotiations.

In both of those cases, the Latvian politicians chose a barely known person who did not belong to any political party. And in both cases, that person turned out to be more strong-willed than most of Latvian career politicians. Both Vike-Freiberga and Skele had a profound impact on Latvian politics, much more than it was expected when they were nominated.

I wonder if there is something deeper behind that. A weak person is less likely to become known outside of his/her own field. This may be why outsiders who ascend to top government positions in Latvia turn out to be stronger and more independent than the career politicians.

Curiously, people who know Zatlers describe him as a person of strong character. Will the parties who nominate him now be happy with him four years later? Or will they see him going in a direction that they didn't expect? As we see from the past, being dark horse does not imply being push-over.