A majority of members of the Saeima on Thursday rejected an opposition motion calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (New Unity).
This time, the no-confidence motion was submitted by the National Alliance (NA).
Eighteen MPs voted in favor of expressing no confidence, while 48 deputies voted against Siliņa’s resignation. Fifteen MPs from the opposition party Latvia First (LPV) did not take part in the vote.
As the LETA news agency learned, several MPs, including some from the ruling coalition, were on official trips abroad and therefore did not participate in the session.
This was already the fifth attempt to force the prime minister’s resignation.
Before the vote, Siliņa said that the Latvian language is being strengthened in Latvia. She stressed that care has been taken in appointing new members of the Public Electronic Mass Media Council (SEPLP) and listening to their views.
“This year we can see that Latvian Radio 4, which broadcast in Russian, no longer exists,”
Siliņa said, adding that the government has strengthened the role of the state language in education and in public media.
“What had not been achieved in previous years is now being done,” the prime minister emphasized, noting that much has been accomplished over the past year and that efforts to strengthen the state language in society will continue.
“We are working purposefully to ensure the use of the Latvian language,” she said.
Concluding her speech, Siliņa urged MPs not to support the no-confidence motion and thanked lawmakers—also those in opposition—for their contribution to strengthening the Latvian language.
The head of the New Unity parliamentary faction, Edmunds Jurēvics, said during the debate that this is an election year, so further no-confidence motions against the prime minister are likely.
“In an election year, this is understandable,”
Jurēvics said, referring to previous opposition attempts, which he described as unfounded. He stressed that much has been done during Siliņa’s term to strengthen the state language in society and in the media.
“The language has been significantly strengthened by this Saeima and this government,” Jurēvics said, while acknowledging that there is still more work to be done. He urged MPs not to politicize the state language but to work together to reinforce it, warning that populist forces are waiting for state-oriented parties to quarrel among themselves—especially over language issues.
Opposition MP Edmunds Zivtiņš (LPV) said Latvia faces many unresolved problems, including immigration. He also criticized the unfinished Rail Baltica bridge pier in the Daugava River, insufficient funding for state roads, and weak economic indicators.
However,
Zivtiņš urged his faction not to vote for Siliņa’s resignation,
saying they could not support the issue raised in the motion, while adding that LPV plans to submit a new no-confidence motion against the prime minister in the coming weeks.
The head of the Stability! parliamentary faction, Svetlana Čulkova, said the NA motion was a good idea but argued that the Russian language is not the real problem in Latvia, pointing instead to issues such as immigration.
NA MP Edvīns Šnore said that Russian-language content still appears on the Latvian Public Media (LSM) website, even though, according to the National Security Concept, it was planned that such content would no longer be present from this year. He also criticized the removal of Polish-language content.
Šnore said he had the impression that Latvia’s media policy is being shaped not in Riga but in Moscow,
claiming that contradictions with national and security interests are becoming increasingly frequent and blatant.
The head of the Progressives parliamentary faction, Andris Šuvajevs, said that in recent weeks there has been a growing number of comments by current and aspiring politicians aimed at discrediting LSM. In his view, a government no-confidence motion linked to public media editorial policy is not “an innocent political move, but a highly symbolic step in an election year.”
Šuvajevs said NA is effectively attacking LSM’s management and would likely demand the board’s resignation if it could. “Attempts to frame LSM management decisions as a security threat are attempts to undermine trust in LSM,” he said, adding that this is happening at a time when there is a war next door and politicians should be especially mindful of information space security.
NA referred to the 2023 National Security Concept, which recommends that “from January 1, 2026, public media content should be produced only in Latvian and in languages belonging to the European cultural space, thereby fostering all residents’ sense of belonging to a unified information space based on the Latvian language and other European Union, European Economic Area, and EU candidate country languages. By ending state funding for Russian-language content, the process of creating a unified information space would be completed, while Russian-language content in commercial media would continue using private funding.”
According to NA,
the Cabinet of Ministers continues to allocate funding for Russian-language content at LSM,
which they say contradicts the goal of promoting a unified information space.
“We believe that the Public Electronic Mass Media and Their Management Law does not require minority-language content to be produced exclusively in Russian, and that these legal norms are not in conflict with the National Security Concept,” NA stated.
Latvia’s government consists of Prime Minister Siliņa and 14 ministers from the parties Progressives, New Unity, and the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS).
As previously reported, opposition parties in the Saeima demanded Siliņa’s resignation four times last year, but she survived all confidence votes.
The most recent confidence vote was held last October, when 46 MPs voted against the resignation, 38 voted in favor, and one MP—Uldis Augulis (ZZS)—abstained. Another MP, Andrejs Ceļapīters, who was then unaffiliated but has since joined the ZZS faction, did not take part in the vote at all.
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