While I admire the spirit of the Latvian people to take matters (and bricks) into their own hands, I can't help but think they went about it the wrong way. It's not going to achieve any of the results the peaceful protesters were aiming for. If the parliament stoops to meeting the demands of hooligans and ruffians, then they're more inept than I thought.
The hooligans did a lot of damage in protest that will only be wasting more of government's money to fix. Who knows, maybe taxes will go up again because of this.
Rioters have said that they were trying to show the world that Latvia wasn't going to take a back seat to corruption and depravity. But what the world is seeing is not the actions of a righteous people, but the actions of hooligans.
Maybe there's some deep reverse psychological meaning here that I'm missing, but it seems to me that all those rioters just set the country back a few years in terms of foreign investors.
At least when the minister's are being incompetent, most don't assume the public is the same. Now however the news has traveled around the world. Colleagues in Germany have asked if it's even safe to be in Latvia right now. The image Latvians have shown the rest of the world is just appalling. They've shown that the country is unstable, and this means no more investments in the country!
Latvia should take a page out of Obama's book. Poise, patience, and peaceful dealings is what this country needs. A new parliament wouldn't hurt either, but it might just be replacing one evil with another evil. But perhaps Latvia needs to work on controlling its people before they start working on the government.
Renolds Krumins
Riga
