Social Dems want elected president, KGB reprieve

Latvia's Social Democrats have unveiled a plan to make sweeping changes to the national constitution.

Two weeks ago, the party launched a campaign to collect the 10,000 signatures needed to propose the amendments, which include popular election of the president and abolishing regulations barring candidates with past connections to the KGB from running for office.

The Social Democrats currently head the Riga municipal government's ruling coalition and hope to gain seats in Parliament in October's national election.

"Making changes to the constitution is a serious part of our (election) campaign," said Janis Dinevics, the party's secretary general . "That is why one can understand the negative attitude toward our proposed constitution from our enemies."

Juris Bojars, who heads the Social Democrats and was a founding member of the Popular Front and a KGB major during the Soviet occupation, is barred from running for office under the constitution .

"I disassociated myself from the KGB of my own accord in 1971," said Bojars. "Anyway, I'm running a party, and that is full stop for the time being."

Representatives of opposing political parties expressed doubt about the proposed amendments.

"Our constitution was written by many different people who represented many different ideas, so to have one party come up with a constitution on its own disregards the plurality and the consensus that is needed to represent all citizens fairly and ably," said Vaira Paegle, an MP with the People's Party.

Paegle, who was in favor of popularly electing the president when she ran for the office in 1999, says she has changed her mind.

"We should stick with the current system in which the president is elected by the Parliament until we develop a stable party system that has continuity where parties will be elected with some sort of regularity from election to election," she said.

Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga does not support the Social Democrats' proposed changes to the constitution because it is the idea of just one party, according to her spokeswoman, Aiva Rozenberga.

"The president thinks that there should be more discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of popularly electing the president before any changes are made to the current system," said the president's spokeswoman.