Opinion piece/Ilona Bērziņa
“Military sculptural compositions” do not tend to appear out of nowhere in three days’ time, not even three months. Coordination and installation is a long and bureaucratically-complex process. This is why the statements from Minister of Defence Andris Sprūds and Commander of Latvian National Armed Forces (NBS) Leonīds Kalniņš about the misuse of the defence sector’s resources and their unwillingness to get to the bottom of this mess suggest a certain level of ambivalence. It is hard to believe that in 12 months no one noticed the ongoing installation outside of Ādaži military base and no one bothered to ask what that thing is or how much it cost to make.
I will say right now that the idea of installing a “gate guardian” near a military base is nothing bad. Not at all. If you open “Wikipedia” and type in “gate guardian”, you will see that in the context of military bases it is a piece of equipment that has served its time: an airplane, an armoured vehicle, an artillery piece, etc., which, mounted on a plinth at the main entrance to a base, performs a kind of symbolic guard function. Such “gatekeepers” can be found at countless NATO bases around the world. In Britain, for example, there are about thirty of them. Therefore, if Latvian NBS want to install a CVR(T) armoured personnel carrier at its own base in Ādaži as a gate guardian, is understandable. All the more so since this entire story began in 2017 and initially cost about EUR 1 800 for a military vehicle that served its time. This is where we can look back at what former Minister of Defence Artis Pabriks told BNN – that representatives of the National Armed Forces approached this idea in 2020, and initially no costs were known.
But the “banana peel” the leadership of NBS have slipped on – EUR 183 000 – was not even mentioned. This amount appears between two procurement procedures – in 2021 and 2023.
The fact that no one in the ministry or the NBS had raised an ear towards the cost of this project is not too surprising. Looking through the website of the Procurement Monitoring Bureau and the section Procurement procedures performed by the National Defence Military Facilities and Procurement Centre, you will an abundance of procurement procedures. Construction work, development of construction projects, purchase of repair materials, design, room cleaning services and many other procurement procedures. Perhaps the minister of defence and the NBS commander should take a look at this site to get some rough insight into what else without military equipment and to what extent defence budget money is being spent.
Additionally, each notice to the contract contains a section such as “Customer”, which, among other things, includes the “contact point of the organization” – the name, surname, telephone number and e-mail address of the person with whom to communicate about the specific procurement procedures. Perhaps this would facilitate the investigation and help Minister of Defence Andris Sprūds, NBS commander Kalniņš, and the Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, who is in the mood to “dig up the truth”.
In fact, the questions are two – why do even the most basic things in our country, when it comes to state or municipal orders, tend to become more expensive and no one takes any responsibility for that,
and second – were Leonīds Kalniņš and Andris Sprūds truly oblivious to what was going on just outside Ādaži military base? As LTV programme De facto was accurately told by a representative of the construction company: “Why didn’t these people, when we were actively working there for almost a year, come up and ask us: “What are you building here?”” (They could have at least asked some questions, grab their heads in shock and at the very least pause the construction project!)
Does this mean that since taking office as minister, Andris Sprūds has never graced Ādaži military base with his presence? Was Lieutenant General Kalniņš using “back door” this whole time to access the base?
Or is it more plausible that the “military sculptural composition” was pulled by its ears, like a rabbit, out of a magic hat to divert residents’ attention from the information about these two high-ranking military officials potentially lying about the Russian drone?
And also, has anyone estimated how much it will cost our military to maintain this composition? It is not that after the installation there are no more problems with the concrete slab coverings or the rainwater drainage system. On top of that, someone needs to keep the 123 m2 large area around the composition clean. It is unlikely they will find someone willing to do this for free, out of love for CVR(T) APC.
The ruling coalition is now considering the possibility that this could cost the NBS commander or the Minister of Defence their post. It’s safe to say no, it won’t. Because both of them are committed to seeking and severely punishing those guilty of such waste.
I would like to cite what [former Minister of Defence] Artis Pabriks told BNN, that the military sector is hierarchical – it is a pyramid. “This means it’s not entirely right to demand responsibility from the lower ranks,” said the former minister. Respectively, every matter is coordinated, and a corporal cannot go over a general. Be that as it may, but NBS, with its strict hierarchy, should not experience any difficulty with shedding some light on this case. Of course, as long as the goal is to find out the truth and the desire to find out where this procurement disaster comes from, specifically the inflated costs. But if the goal is to create a smokescreen to hide another scandal behind it, then there will be no results. If someone is “sacrificed” in the end, it is unlikely it will be the minister or NBS commander.