The Green Dragon Lady claims a posse or a platoon

So now the monkey wrench flies toward the gears of Latvia’s movement toward the Eurozone. Whether it hits and stops the wheels, we will see next week. However, it is hard to believe that Saeima deputy Iveta Grigule (Green/Farmers’ Union – ZZS) would go out on a risky limb and groundlessly claim that she has the 34 Saeima deputy signatures pledged that are needed to ask the president either to refuse to sign the law on adoption of the euro or submit it for a referendum, first gathering the signatures of at least 10% of the electorate.

The start of that process alone, even if it ultimately fails (insufficient signatures or the euro law is approved), is a major threat to the process of euro adoption, as has been pointed out earlier. In addition, there is yet another threat – that the whole attempt to block the law can trigger a kind of constitutional crisis in Latvia. Grigule has said that if President Andris Bērziņš refuses to act on the request by at least 34 deputies, she will take her case to Latvia’s Constitutional Court. Bērziņš could refuse, citing Article 68 of the Latvian Constitution, which requires at least 50 parliamentarians’ signatures if the disputed legislative act affects Latvia’s foreign relations and treaty obligations. In this case, it could be argued that rejecting the law on euro adoption is the same as backing out of the commitment made to eventually adopt the euro when Latvia joined the European Union (EU) in 2004.

Pro-euro politicians, including Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, have argued that by passing laws regulating the practical and technical side of the switch from lats to euro, Latvia is simply fulfilling a commitment it implicitly made when the electorate voted in favor of joining the EU in 2003. The euro itself was not on the ballot, it was a yes or no to the EU, but the treaty Latvia signed committed it to adopting the euro when it met the Maastricht criteria, which it now seems to be doing after failing to do so in 2008 and 2011.

It is interesting how the issue would be framed before the Constitutional Court (and I am no expert on Latvian constitutional law). It seems that the Court would have to rule, explicitly or implicitly, on whether there was a Latvian treaty commitment to adopt the euro, which could be changed by a referendum rejecting the implementation law. The president’s rejection of a petition by less than 50 Saeima deputies would also mean that Bērziņš at least implicitly supports this interpretation. After all, if no international treaty commitment by Latvia would be affected by a potential referendum, then there was no commitment in force. The same if the court rules against Bērziņš. In effect, the issue of whether Latvia already “voted” to adopt the euro when it joined the EU and would be substantially modifying this commitment by stopping the implementation law,  or whether there was no such commitment, will end up decided by the Constitutional Court.

So far, so good for Iveta Grigule, who has become the opposition’s Dragon Lady to the coalition government and has probably lured Jānis Dombrava of the National Alliance to her lair. But what happens next, when Latvia is cast into the murky ozone as far as its relationship with the euro in general? After all, if there are no immediate or even medium-term plans to adopt the euro, then the lat could come under various kinds of pressure. If uncertainty jacks up interest rates and yields on the relatively few Latvian interest-bearing instruments available to foreign investors (or investors in general) rise, the lat could surge. Or it could plunge on uncertainty, fear and paranoia. How many millions is the Bank of Latvia ready to spend to stabilize the currency, and by what targets or standards? To keep it in a narrow ERM II corridor when being in the ERM II regime is in question?

No one seems to have a “we just postponed the euro indefinitely” scenario for a managed float of the lat – pegged to what?  Or not pegged, dancing around, to translate a (off)colorful Latvian expression – like a fart in a frying pan (kā pirdiens uz pannas)? All of these issues may come into focus next week, if the Dragon Lady gets her way. Question is – will the dragon be able to blow out any dangerous fires it sets? 

FYI: A platoon is a military unit typically composed of two to four sections or squads and containing 26 to 50 soldiers. The Dragon Lady claims she has her platoon,

Dear Latvian readers: the Green Dragon here has nothing to do with the national sport of alcoholism (zaļais pūķis). No such reference to Deputy Grigule is intended. 

Buffoon politics (?) appears in Latvia

If anyone thought the totally batshit side of Latvian politics was also on vacation this week, they were proven wrong by the antics of former TV comedian formerly known as Viesturs Dūle. Things started out innocently enough a couple of weeks (?) ago when Dūle, the Latvian rapper Gustavo and some other dude announced they intended to start a political party called Skaistā Nākotne or “Beautiful Future”. That should have been a hint that this enterprise would quickly tilt to the gonzo side of things.

And soon it did. After what must have been a hearty breakfast of hallucinogenic mushrooms, Dūle announced that was henceforth to be called Zuarguss Klororus-Zarmass. Gustavo, who was a stage pseudonym to begin with, will henceforth  be called Arstarulsmirus Arsujumfus-Tarus and the third dude - Jurgstulajstus Lajurgus-Urgurus. 

Now I have read a little about ketamine-induced highs, where people apparently are propelled into a different dimension where choirs of elves appear. Or perhaps it was DMT that did this to you. Anyway, the names of our new political party founders appear to have come from the lyrics of what those elves were singing. From here on, whatever these guys do is total crank-o-rama as far as I am concern. Believe nothing they say. Oddly, just like real politics. Which may be the point of the whole, as Latvians would say, balagāns. 

To be sure, what Zuarguss and his buddies are up to is nothing new. In Britain, the Monster Raving Loony Party  has been a part of the comic political landscape since the 1980s. It seems to have become a small business and a means of promoting various alternative and strange musicians. Nothing wrong with that. What is worse is when there are politicians and political movements that are geniunely wackbat (my word, derived from wacko and batshit), as illustrated by this New York Times blog on The Crackpot Caucus.  Perhaps the balagānšik formerly known as Viesturs Dūle should get back to exposing the real crackpots and cranks in Latvia, which I think he was trying to do in his satirical TV shows some years ago. In any case, Zuarguss has also cast a pall of unseriousness on his movement to improve education in Latvia. There are real, serious problems in Latvia that cannot be solved by yet another put-on political movement -- but at least one that signals that it is not for real.  At the same time, Skaistā Nākotne it has published some programmatic material (in Latvian) that appears to take a serious, if somewhat unconventional stand on the issue of corruption (those guilty of bribe giving or taking should be fined, not jailed, etc.) Too bad little of this can be taken seriously, now that Zuarguss and Arstarulmirus have been chanting with the elves. 

Anti-Semitic fog around Latvia's Jewish restitution issues may hide other agendas

That most Latvian of all holidays, the Midsummer Līgo celebration is over (technically, today, June 24, as I write, is still Jānis Day, from which the holiday derives its name of Jāņi). Normally this signals the start of a respite from active politics, since the Saeima (lovingly called the “Monkey House” by some journalists) is in recess. This year, on the eve of Jāņi, a moderate political earthquake hit as Minister of Justice Gaidis Bērziņš of the National Alliance resigned in protest over what he said was a dispute over government plans to deal with the issue of restitution of property seized after 1940 to some Jewish organizations.

By some accounts, the value of this property – buildings and land in Riga and other places around Latvia – is around LVL 30 million.  That is not some cash payment the organizations want (as sometimes misinterpreted), but the estimated value of the properties, some of which may be unusable and unmarketable and would have to be compensated in cash should the plan go through.

The National Alliance objects to the government’s plans to reopen the restitution process (begun more than 20 years ago) for the sake of one interest/religious/ethnic group. This is not in and of itself an unreasonable position. Even Jewish community spokesmen have said that they would welcome the government allowing other ethnic, religious or social organizations to recover property that they are entitled to, but have not managed to claim to date.

However, the debate has stimulated a very ugly torrent of hateful, anti-Semitic comments in Latvian news portals. To what extent this reflects the views of society or just of a small core of crazies using different pseudonyms is unclear. But the stuff they are writing is pretty deranged:

Damned Jews!  Those (obscenity censored by the portal’s bot) sent money from the USA to Hitler to run his war machine. That’s how they got their state. Asking compensation from Latvia which belonged to the Urals or Germany. Wrecked banks! And now they ask for their property? Adolf, where are you?

If you are a Jew, it is best if you immediately shoot yourself.  Jews are the bloodsuckers of other nations.

HITLER SHOT TOO FEW OF THEM

Not without reason this nation was hated during Czarist times and they were deprived of all rights. The Soviet system allowed them to awaken and rename themselves with Russian last names and make up the name Hebrews, because the name Jews(žīdi, neutral in Latvian, but reminiscent of the abusive “zhid” in Russian)sounded derogatory to them. The Jews throughout history have done more harm to the world than all wars taken together. If someone were to add up all the owners of capital in the world, a not very pleasant scene would be revealed – we are all dependent on their greed.

While these rantings rarely get translated and presented outside of Latvia, anyone reading the portals uncritically could get the impression that Latvia is a profoundly anti-Semitic country, distorting the debate over restitution to Jewish organizations as a purely “anti-Semites against the Jews”  issue, which it is not.

The issue is one of making an exception for organizations that have some break in their historical continuity to recover property after established deadlines. In the case of Latvia’s Jews, with much of the community destroyed in the Holocaust, it is no surprise that some Jewish organizations had no direct “heirs”,  even if they were reconstituted in the years since Latvia regained its independence in 1991. It is also claimed that the Jewish organizations seeking to regain properties mainly have Russian Jewish immigrants as their members, and have little or no continuity with the Latvian Jewish organizations that were expropriated in 1940.

One analogy that could be drawn (hypothetically) is that of an Irish Catholic congregation in the US that has some of its property taken illegally in, say, 1970, and drags the case through the courts and other institutions for more than four decades. In the mean time, the Irish Catholics are replaced by Latin Americans, who are no less Catholic, but of a different ethnic background.

This will not really work in Latvia, because when it comes to “ethnicity”, the current Jewish community is seen as “Russian” and representing the “occupation” (even if many moved to Latvia during the Soviet era because it was seen as one of the least anti-Semitic areas of the USSR). A few persons associated with “anti-Latvian” causes, such as Vladimirs Lindermans, one of the instigators of the referendum to make Russian a second state language, is understood to be Jewish. So is Aleksandrs Giļmans, an ex- politician who has cast doubt on the historical condemnation of the June 14, 1941 deportation of thousands of Latvian citizens (including a disproportionate number of Jews). That, for many Latvians, is the equivalent of Holocaust denial for Jews.

By creating a medium intensity political crisis (not quite toppling the government), the resignation of Bērziņš comes as a confluence of the worst possible factors – perceived and real anti-Semitism in Latvia, issues of restitution for the Soviet and Nazi eras (it was actually the Soviet occupation that confiscated Jewish property, the Germans didn’t get their chance) and suspicions that the whole thing actually is a symptom of bigger (?) political sharks fighting under the murky waters.

The National Alliance seems to be shrugging off the anti-Jewish tempests in several internet teacups that its move has set off. The party alliance itself cannot be labeled as anti-Semitic, even though one of its former(?) spokesmen, Jānis Iesalnieks, triggered a discussion of the possibility of “intelligent anti-Semitism” – whatever than means? Is it criticizing Israel’s policies (a legitimate issue, but Israel is a state, not some hazy entity called “the Jews”). Or what?

What the National Alliance may be hoping to gain is threefold – to have the government retreat on the Jewish restitution issue or open the matter to “all” ethnic and religious organizations, to replace Bērziņš with its new candidate for Justice Minister (keeping that post) and to perhaps unseat Daniels Pavļuts of the Reform Party as Minister of Economics. The Harvard-trained minister’s party, according to the latest voter polls, would get 1.8% in an election held today, putting it well below the  5% threshold for being seated in the Saeima and making the party political “ dead meat” waiting topple over when the next Saeima elections come.

Who else may be behind the scenes? There have been guesses that the beleaguered Ventspils mayor and oligarch Aivars Lembergs could be pulling the strings. His main benefit would be political instability and bringing international attention to “anti-Semitic Latvia” rather that to his case. A Latvian court said it would enforce a British court ruling freezing some USD 135 million in Lembergs assets. It could be the beginning of the end, and he is using his waning political influence to pull down as much of the house around him as possible.

As for the Jewish properties, the picture is not clear. Conflicting lists exist of what is in question – some properties have already been returned (Bikur Holim hospital), while others look abandoned, in bad shape or in the hands of “owners”  who seem to have obtained title to them from the Latvian state by murky means. What this may actually expose – whether that was the purpose of the Jewish community’s requests or not—is the mess or “bardaks”  that still exists concerning unclaimed and “difficult” properties 21 years after Latvia regained its independence.