DETERMINATION: According to Kusins, the head of Parliament's legal office, lawmakers will have to draft a fresh KGB bill if they want the legislation to be passed.
RIGA - Parliament has announced that the much-discussed bill on publishing the names of former KGB agents will not be accepted, as the new government has no right to adopt bills from the previous parliament. Although Parliament's rules of order govern that a new government may continue to hear bills left unfinished by its predecessor, the regulations do not apply to adopted or returned bills, head of Parliament's legal office, Gunars Kusins, said on Nov. 11.
The bill on former Soviet secret service members has already been rejected by the president three times.
"We can only discuss this issue again by proposing a new bill," Kusins said.
Indeed, lawmakers have wasted little time in trying to save the legislation.
On Nov. 14, Leopolds Ozolins from the Greens and Farmers Union Party started collecting signatures to get the bill back on Parliament's agenda.
The only legal route he could take was submitting an identical bill with the support of at least five lawmakers.
Ozolins told the Baltic News Service that the KGB archives should be made public so "that the people are clear about it."
He disagreed with the president's opinion that the information should not be published, saying it's "a shame on Latvia" that the names of former KGB collaborators are not yet known.
Ozolins said he was sure he could find five supporters for the bill, mentioning his own party and lawmakers from the nationalist For Fatherland and Freedom Party as likely signatories.
For Fatherland and Freedom Party leader Maris Grinblats told the Baltic News Service he supported such an idea in theory, but would need to look closely at the bill's content before signing it.
"I do not see a reason for hiding this information," he said.
Ozolins pointed out that the new bill would be exactly the same as the previous one, which President Vaira Vike-Freiberga returned to Parliament in October. The bill would allow for the publication of information on former KGB agents in the official Latvian newspaper Latvijas Vestnesis on March 1, 2007.
After returning the legislation to Parliament for the third time, Vike-Freiberga reiterated that publishing all KGB files indiscriminately would make it hard to determine exactly what those on the list actually did. This, she emphasized, could harm the interests of those who had cooperated with the KGB in unconventional issues such as fighting organized and economic crime but did not believe in the organization's ideology or participate in the repression of political dissidents.
Vike-Freiberga added that, in 90 percent of cases, the KGB file index only includes personal and work employment data, without additional information. Therefore, it was impossible to know just how involved the individual was with the Soviet secret police.
The possibility of publishing KGB files, left behind in Latvia after the Baltic state restored its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, has been discussed at regular intervals over the past decade. Some argue that the evil-doers should be exposed, while others question the authenticity of the documents' information.
