Latvian Political Monitor

From@andrislov

The voter said clearly: @AndrisKulbergs and AS have 41 mandates, New Unity 7. Taking JV back into government is like appointing the same arsonist as chief architect after a fire, and then giving him the keys to the new safe in the name of stability. 41 seats is a historic credit of trust for change, not a resuscitation of old coalition arithmetic. Giving ministries to a party with 7 deputies turns 41 mandates into an expensive decoration. Next time, the voter will throw such a compromise in the trash. 15 years of lagging behind our neighbors is not a mystical natural phenomenon. It is concrete policy, permit jungles, tax experiments, and state-owned company monopolies that strangle local business. By seating the guilty at the table, Kulbergs turns from a reformer into an accomplice of the system. Unity's real ideology is not liberalism, but the apparatus, capacity-building projects, endless strategies, and absorbing EU funds for nothing. Let them back in, and every idea to eliminate redundant state positions will end with the creation of a new department for reducing the state. State debt of 22.6 billion, interest payments devouring the budget, but the old coalition school knows only one trick: borrow more. The habit of calling a deficit a smart investment will brake any real turnaround. Taxes will remain, debt will grow, and the entrepreneur will still submit three certificates to buy one screw. Classic parasitism of power: when growth again lags behind Vilnius and Tallinn, JV will announce that Kulbergs is too radical. When bureaucracy does not shrink, that the coalition consensus must be respected; in the end, the voter will send the bill for stagnation to the one who had 41 votes, not to the seven backstage conductors. Foreign and local capital does not watch pretty press conferences; it watches who sits at the decision-making table. If the party that lost three-quarters of its mandates again oversees finance or justice, no one will believe that the rules of the game have really changed. This time the voter gave the problem exactly 7 votes. Taking it back to the table is not statesmanship; it is capitulation before the battle begins. The mandate was given to weed out the weeds, not to water them again and call it national unity.

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From@AlvisHermanis1

Conclusions. The only thing I regret is that the election method proposed by MMN would make it possible to get a parliament with at least 30 Kulbergs and another 30 people far smarter than Kulberg, because the ban on combining offices would also be lifted. We represented those people who saw the cause of the problem rather than fighting the consequences. Thank them! Over the past six months, since MMN appeared, we have already made a considerable contribution to the common cause: we have radically changed Latvia's political agenda — changing the rules in state administration, or the general overhaul, became the main discourse in party rhetoric, and MMN's ideas became the main content of Kulberg's famous evening video selfies. Because, as he himself admitted on Domburs' show, AS had no program at all. We are not jealous, quite the opposite — we are glad that our ideas are being used as an instruction for action, and together with the rest of society we hope that Kulberg will succeed in implementing MMN's political program in practice as well. We would have done it better ourselves, but this option isn't bad either. Let's hope. It is also important that we have removed the JV/Pro monopoly from the race. Their era is over, and the state has at least been given hope of recovery. The immigration matters, however, make me worried. Because Kulberg supports bringing in low-skilled labor, and that will inevitably become an existential threat in the long term. And, finally, there is now a possibility that Rinkevičs definitely needs to be sent back to live with his mom. Because during a war, exposing the entire nation to security risks and putting Sprūds/Siliņa in charge just to get to live in the Castle was unforgivable. We got lucky. But it's not over yet. Thanks again to the MMN camp. At least we tried.

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From@AlvisHermanis1

Conclusions. The only thing I regret is that the election method proposed by MMN would make it possible to get a parliament with at least 30 Kulbergs and another 30 people far smarter than Kulberg, because the ban on combining offices would also be lifted. We represented those people who saw the cause of the problem rather than fighting the consequences. Thank them! Over the past six months, since MMN appeared, we have already made a considerable contribution to the common cause: we have radically changed Latvia's political agenda — changing the rules in state administration, or the general overhaul, became the main discourse in party rhetoric, and MMN's ideas became the main content of Kulberg's famous evening video selfies. Because, as he himself admitted on Domburs' show, AS had no program at all. We are not jealous, quite the opposite — we are glad that our ideas are being used as an instruction for action, and together with the rest of society we hope that Kulberg will succeed in implementing MMN's political program in practice as well. We would have done it better ourselves, but this option isn't bad either. Let's hope. It is also important that we have removed the JV/Pro monopoly from the race. Their era is over, and the state has at least been given hope of recovery. The immigration matters, however, make me worried. Because Kulberg supports bringing in low-skilled labor, and that will inevitably become an existential threat in the long term. And, finally, there is now a possibility that Rinkevičs definitely needs to be sent back to live with his mom. Because during a war, exposing the entire nation to security risks and putting Sprūds/Siliņa in charge just to get to live in the Castle was unforgivable. We got lucky. But it's not over yet. Thanks again to the MMN camp. At least we tried.

Open referenced post