Levits officially nominates Karins for PM

RIGA - President Egils Levits today officially nominated New Unity (JV) politician and current Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins for the post of Prime Minister.

Levits announced the nomination of Karins at a press conference today, adding that he will sign the relevant document later in the day.

The president said that he got acquainted with the future government's declaration and that he had gained a "completely clear conviction" that the next coalition will ve stable enough and that it has enough common grounds that can serve as the foundation for the next government's activities in the next four years.

The two politicians discussed the first draft of the government declaration during the meeting, Levits informed. Karins already sent the document to the president for consideration on Monday. The declaration provides for five blocks. One of them is security and foreign policy, which outlines the actions of the government in these areas. The next block is education, which, according to the president, is an extremely important area. According to him, representatives of the potential coalition should work more carefully on this section - especially on issues of higher education, science and technology.

The third section of the document will be dedicated to energy, climate and environmental issues, which, as the official pointed out, is a new policy in Latvia and should be a separate political direction, "similarly to the rest of Europe and in accordance with European Union (EU) regulations". Another building block of the government's declaration is competitiveness in the broadest sense, Levits said. In the document, issues of the quality of life will be separated, where the policy that the government will initiate to improve the quality of life of residents in various areas will be discussed.

The draft of the government's declaration also mentions the most important priorities, Levits pointed out, saying that work on them should be continued in order to outline them more clearly and in more detail.

As reported, Karins and his JV party have actually been engaged in government formation since the Saeima elections at the beginning of October, where JV gathered the largest number of votes and the other political parties recognized that it is JV that should take the initiative to form the next government. Levits also previously named Karins as the head of negotiations for the formation of the future government.

After the elections, JV expressed the desire for a coalition to be formed by four political forces - JV, the United List (AS), the National Alliance (NA) and the Progressives, but due to the "ideological objections" of AS and NA, the Progressives were excluded from the negotiations and currently work is underway on the creation of a three-party government made up of JV, AS and NA.