President blasts lawmakers for failure to push laws through

Nov 27, 2008
TBT Staff in cooperation with BNS

RIGA 's Latvian President Valdis Zatlers has lambasted the parliament legal committee for its failure to push through constitutional amendments that would allow the people do dissolve the legislature by popular vote.

The president said that by not fulfilling the promise to amend the Constitution, lawmakers would ruin people's trust in the Latvian state.

Zatlers said that he has received confirmation from all the political parties represented at the parliament to work actively at the amendments.

"I am sure that it is possible to find compromises on all the issues of the Constitutional amendments if the political parties seriously wish to work. I would like to remind the political parties that they have to meet promises given before and after the referendum, otherwise people's trust in the state will be ruined," Zatlers said.

"I disapprove of the attitude of particular representatives of political parties to the opinion of a significant part of the nation and the president's legislative initiatives," the president said.

He underscored that the parliament and the government have to solve several significant issues, including economic crisis, therefore an efficient instrument to solve parliamentary and state crisis should be found.

Zatlers said that he is ready to use all the mechanisms provided by the Constitution to ensure adoption of these amendments.

This summer a referendum was held in Latviaand a large number of voters supported the idea of amending the Constitution to give the people the right to disband the parliament. Even though the referendum failed to gather enough "yes" to send the proposal to the parliament, the Latvian president used his right to initiate legislation and proposed the given amendments to the parliament at an extraordinary meeting.

Zatlers said repeatedly earlier that lawmakers are too slow in preparing the Constitutional amendments, while representatives of the People's Party and the Greens and Farmers Union (ZZS) said last week that there are more important problems in the country to be solved than these amendments.

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