Election law vote pending

The Latvian Parliament on May 9 is expected to vote to scrap Latvian language proficiency requirements in the country's controversial election law to meet NATO demands.

The vote follows the passage April 30 of a set of amendments to Latvia's constitution that makes Latvian the official language of the Parliament and local governments.

"All speeches and debates have to be in Latvian. MPs take an oath in Latvian, swearing to uphold the Latvian language," said MP Vaira Paegle.

The amendments are in response to the pending changes to the election law and are seen by many as a trade-off with right-wing MPs who have opposed abolishing the language proficiency requirements.

According to Janis Jurkans, head of the leftist For Human Rights in a United Latvia coalition, right-wing politicians in the Parliament are trying to save face ahead of October's parliamentary elections. "It is already written in the constitution that Latvian should be the only language in the Parliament, so how is it possible to strengthen the usage of Latvian," he said. "No other language than Latvian is spoken in the Parliament already as it is."

There is now debate on what will happen if, after the changes to the election law, an MP is elected that can't speak Latvian well enough to participate in debates.

"We need regulations, rules and procedures about this," said Gunars Kusins, head of the Parliament's legal office. "We just have to wait and see what the final amendments to the election law will be."

The constitutional amendments that make Latvian the working language of Parliament touched off another round of criticism from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The amendments, ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said this week, are "a serious obstacle to an improvement in Russian-Latvian relations and to adopting good neighborly relations."