President blasts lawmakers for failure to push laws through

RIGA 's Latvian President ValdisZatlers has lambasted the parliament legal committee for its failure to pushthrough constitutional amendments that would allow the people do dissolve thelegislature by popular vote.

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

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

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

"I disapprove of the attitude of particular representatives of politicalparties to the opinion of a significant part of the nation and the president'slegislative initiatives," the president said.

He underscored that the parliament and the government have to solve severalsignificant issues, including economic crisis, therefore an efficientinstrument to solve parliamentary and state crisis should be found.

Zatlers said that he is ready to use all the mechanisms provided by theConstitution 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 togive the people the right to disband the parliament. Even though the referendumfailed to gather enough "yes" to send the proposal to the parliament,the Latvian president used his right to initiate legislation and proposed thegiven amendments to the parliament at an extraordinary meeting.

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