Before taking up their position as leaders of the new ruling coalition, New Era prided itself on upholding ideals of transparency and keeping political promises. The party has spent the past few years crying foul every time the previous governments broke their promises, or failed to make the tough decisions needed to get the country back on track.
Which makes it all the more disappointing that the New Era-led coalition is now pulling to all the same old tricks that got the country into dire financial straights in the first place.
The Czech EU presidency has called the latest round of cuts a "courageous and ambitious" step toward getting the country back on track. They are right 's the difficult budget cuts that were pushed through Saeima (Latvian parliament) are unpopular, but necessary to get the IMF and EU funds that are now Latvia's only hope of avoiding defaulting.
What the ever-diplomatic EU executive branch failed to point out, however, is that the Latvian government has yet again delayed the problem far longer than necessary 's hurting the country in the long run for some short term political gain.
Finance Minister Einars Repse waited until June 8, the day immediately following municipal government and EU parliament elections, to break the news to the country that they would have to slash yet another 500 million lats from the budget. What convenient timing for a party facing humiliating defeat at the hands of the only group of politicians that has not yet had its chance to mess the country up, the Russian-rights party Harmony Center.
Though he praised the current and previous governments 's calling the work of incumbent Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis and former PM Ivars Godmanis "heroic" 's he admitted that almost nothing has been done to tackle the economic crisis. Now, he said, finally, we will announce these painful wage cuts.
It is all too clear why these cuts weren't announced until after the election. One would have thought the EU's refusal to send a 200 million euro tranche in March would have been a wake up call that the bloc is serious about making the Latvian government cut its budget. But they still waited until June 8 to actually make the cuts. If New Era was still in the opposition and any other party had pulled a stunt like that, they would have been livid.
In the fast paced roller coaster economy of Latvia, time is money. The longer the government put off making these cuts, the deeper the cuts would have to be. And now the cuts are so deep that commentators are seriously discussing the impending collapse of the Latvian public education system.
And then there is the hypocrisy. On June 16, Dombrovskis said that providing social protection was one of the government's key priorities. No, he was not joking.
Dombrovskis said it was particularly important to protect the unemployed. He then went on to set unemployment benefits to 45 lats 's forcing the unemployed to live on about $2.00 per day 's something akin to the impoverished in African or Asian third world countries.
He said the government needed to protect those who had been worst affected by the crisis 's and who has been affected if not teachers, who took to the streets even before the crisis to protest their situation. Now, teachers will be looking at a paycheck of 172 lats per workload: barely enough to afford an apartment on the outskirts of town. Barely higher than the country's minimum wage.
He said the government needed to protect families with children, then passed a budget whereby childcare benefits are set at an astounding eight lats per child.
There can be no doubt that this latest round of budget cuts is both painful and necessary. But the question is not whether Latvia had to make these cuts 's it is a question of when and how. It is a question of honesty, transparency and integrity. On these counts, it would be hard to say that the ruling coalition has been "courageous."
