RIGA - Nearly a year after he first tried to hound him out of his job, it was appropriate that Aigars Kalvitis was called upon to deliver the coup de grace to Aleksejs Loskutovs, head of KNAB, Latvia's anti-corruption bureau.
It was no coincidence that the decisive vote was postponed until former PM Aigars Kalvitis arrived, ensuring the government had the numbers it needed. It was Kalvitis who led the charge against the KNAB boss last year, but the crude way he went about it ended up costing him his own job. Sneaking in via a side door, Kalvitis relished his chance to say what amounted to "I told you so" and delivered a thumping denunciation of Loskutovs' stewardship of KNAB.
The Latvian government managed to win Loskutovs' ouster at the end of a gruelling, extraordinary parliamentary session held on Sunday, June 29. The vote was 52-40, causing anger among the hundreds of protesters who had been gathering outside the chamber since the early morning.
The building that houses MPs' offices lies directly across Jekaba Iela from the Saeima, and that's where the crowd gathered, meaning MPs had to run the gauntlet every time they crossed from one to the other. Government members were greeted with boos, prominent opposition figures raised cheers, and obscure backbenchers simply walked by unmolested, looking disappointed no one had noticed them.
When Loskutovs himself showed up briefly, he was showered in flowers by well-wishers.
Determined not to commit the sin of anonymity was government MP Juris Dobelis, who mugged outrageously for the cameras and riled the crowd to such an extent that it changed its chant of "Come on out!" to "Go back in!"
Before the decisive vote on Loskutovs provided a climax, the Saeima provided a couple of warm-up acts: no-confidence votes on two government ministers, Vinets Veldre (Defense) and Martins Roze (Agriculture). Both survived fairly comfortably thanks to the government's numerical advantage, even with Prime Minister Godmanis in hospital after a car accident.
But the decision to sack Loskutovs could return to haunt the government. The first test will be a referendum due Aug. 2. Officially, its subject is the convoluted constitutional matter of how Parliament can be dissolved by the President, but as with the recent Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty, many voters will treat it as a chance to show their anger on domestic issues in general and the Loskutovs issue in particular.
The official reason for getting rid of Loskutovs was a failure of oversight when it emerged that two KNAB employees had been pocketing large amounts of cash (officially given as around 130,000 lats) seized during raids. Loskutovs himself has committed no crime.
KNAB has also revealed huge overspends in election expenses among parties of the ruling coalition and is believed to have been investigating cozy relationships between those parties and some of the country's richest businessmen.
In going after Loskutovs last year, the coalition (which remained virtually unchanged despite the departure of Kalvitis) turned him into a cause celebre among a broad spectrum of the Latvian electorate. Had they not done so, it would have been a relatively simple task to force his resignation in the wake of the revelations of cops gone bad in his department. But now Loskutovs is seen as a symbolic figure among his supporters, representing a battle for political control between the rule of law and vested-interest groups, making him potentially a handy recruit to opposition parties.
Transport Minister (and in Godmanis' absence, acting PM) Ainars Slesers told The Baltic Times Loskutovs had nobody but himself to blame for his downfall but admitted that he could become a political force: "One hundred and thirty thousand lats were stolen and many cases are now at risk because the money was part of eleven different cases which were under investigation.
"Last year Loskutovs was given the message that the system must improve. Unfortunately, nothing was done. He did nothing. The worst thing that happened was that he postponed investigations several times exactly in the sectors in which this money disappeared. The question is: was it because of his incompetence or because he wanted to hide something?
"It's interesting for the opposition to politicize all this," Slesers continued. "Of course somebody would like to get Mr Loskutovs in his party 's the opposition parties are fighting over which party he should join, because he could be very popular. He expressed himself that he could be a good president. I think it is unacceptable if somebody leading such an institution is talking openly through the mass media that he is ready to become president."
Artis Pabriks took the opposite line. Pabriks, a former government colleague of Slesers' who resigned as a result of the first attempt to dismiss Loskutovs and is now an opposition MP with a fledgling political party, said that those who wanted to get rid of Loskutovs "did everything they could" to get enough support. Pabriks also delivered one of the most passionate speeches during the debate on Loskutovs, asking whether Latvia deserved to be considered a modern EU member state: "Why vote to join the EU and then organize your democracy like a third-world country?" he asked, to howls of protest from the government benches.
Another interesting element of an already bizarre day in Riga was the sight of British pop star Seal among the protesters outside Saeima. He was in town to perform the latest leg of his European tour and just happened to stumble across the demonstration while sightseeing. Even so, he was remarkably well-briefed, telling The Baltic Times: "From what I've been told they're trying to close down a criminal investigation bureau and it's not the first time they've tried to do it. Last time they were trumped by the protesters. The crowd seems fairly peaceful, more of an acknowledgment than a protest. I'm looking forward to playing Arena Riga tonight."
