Ilona Bērziņa/BNN
With less than three weeks to go until the 15th Saeima election on the 3rd of October, BNN is taking a closer look at the political forces competing for seats in parliament. We begin with a party that, according to August polling, still has a chance of clearing the 5% threshold.
Reputation, an attempt to break free from the “old mould” and the green dragon. What are ZZS’s chances?
As recently as Friday, the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) had little reason to worry about making it into the 15th Saeima. Although an August SKDS poll showed support for ZZS at just 2.8%, a survey conducted at the end of August by Latvijas fakti in cooperation with SIA Faktu logs put the party at 6.9%. Then Saturday arrived, and now-former Welfare Minister Reinis Uzulnieks managed to gamble away his political career – and perhaps more than a few ZZS supporters – to the “green dragon” of alcohol.
An extraordinary meeting of the ZZS board has already pulled the emergency brake on the situation, recalling Uzulnieks from his post as Welfare Minister and expelling him from the party. In doing so, ZZS is demonstrating zero tolerance for drunk driving and showing that it is prepared to sacrifice any “sheep” that strays, regardless of their previous achievements.
Politically, however, this display of values does not solve the problem. No matter how much controversy erupts, ZZS cannot remove Uzulnieks from its candidate list. Registered candidate lists cannot be withdrawn, and amendments can be made only in specific cases laid down by law by the Central Election Commission (CVK). A party’s desire to rid itself of a “scapegoat”, or a candidate’s excessive fondness for the “green dragon”, is not among them.
This creates a grotesque situation: the party says this person no longer belongs to our political force, yet voters in Zemgale will still see him as number one on the ZZS list. It is difficult to believe that voters will start studying the Saeima Election Law to understand how this happened.
This is an issue lawmakers should consider during the next Saeima. Perhaps the Saeima Election Law does need to be amended so that a candidate can be removed in this or another exceptional situation even relatively shortly before an election. Requiring candidates to produce a certificate from an addiction specialist confirming that they are free from addictions would probably make little sense. One can only imagine the chorus of outrage over privacy, human rights and everything else that would follow.
For the sake of fairness, it should be said that in certain circles it is hardly a secret how many people at various levels of power and influence enjoy a stronger drink. The only difference between them and Uzulnieks is that they have not been caught.
Meanwhile, one poll has ZZS standing outside the doors of the Saeima, while another has it safely inside parliament. The Uzulnieks scandal has not yet been measured by either survey. Claims that it has already cost ZZS one, two or three percentage points – or, conversely, nothing at all – therefore cannot be taken seriously at this stage. Its impact will only become visible in September.
Generational change. An ambition or reality?
In this election, ZZS is trying to prove that a generational shift is taking place within the party. So far, it is visible mainly in the advertising.
The party’s candidate for prime minister is no longer Aivars Lembergs, but Economy Minister Viktors Valainis. He is also the number one candidate on the ZZS list in Riga.
With Valainis as its public face, the party may be trying to break free from the image of the “old ZZS”. He talks about investment, economic growth and entrepreneurship, while the ZZS programme itself is highly ambitious. By 2030, the party promises a minimum wage of 1,250 euros, an average salary of 2,500 euros, an average pension of 1,000 euros, 5% VAT on essential food products, zero property tax on primary residences and at least one billion euros in foreign investment every year.
And now let us remember that classic line, uttered long ago by a representative of a different political force: “Well, how can you not make promises?”
In an interview with Jānis Domburs, Valainis did not provide financial calculations for a number of the programme’s promises. ZZS’s economic offer could therefore work either as a positive vision for the future or as yet another generous pre-election catalogue.
In recent weeks, Valainis, who served as Economy Minister in both Evika Siliņa’s and Andris Kulbergs’ governments, has become increasingly critical of Prime Minister Kulbergs’ performance and the pace of the government’s spending review.
And here a fair question arises: Mr Valainis, what have you personally done since September 2023, right up to the present day, to address these issues? Where is the substantial reduction of the bureaucratic apparatus, the trimming of supervisory and management boards at state-owned companies, and the elimination of other entirely unnecessary spending?
The Krauze forestry case and the Uldis Augulis phenomenon
ZZS already has a reputation problem involving one of its party leaders. In May, prosecutors carried out procedural actions against then-Agriculture Minister and ZZS leader Armands Krauze in the so-called forestry industry case. He was given the status of a person against whom criminal proceedings had been initiated, and then-Prime Minister Evika Siliņa dismissed him from office literally in the final minutes of her term.
The National Audit Office’s finding that the support mechanism for forestry companies reduced Latvijas valsts meži revenue by 49.4 million euros certainly sounds severe. However, it should not be forgotten that the decision to support domestic forestry companies was adopted and approved by the entire government, not Krauze alone. The argument that the government was full of fools who understood nothing about forestry hardly withstands scrutiny. For now, the matter continues to grind through the extremely slow mills of Latvia’s law enforcement institutions.
Uldis Augulis is one of Latvia’s most experienced ministers, having headed both the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Welfare several times. In the Kulbergs government, he became Agriculture Minister in place of Krauze.
His political experience is genuinely valuable to ZZS at a time of crisis. Yet Augulis, much like Augusts Brigmanis, represents precisely the political generation from which Valainis is trying to distance the party’s image. Augulis is an experienced politician who knows the system well, but at the same time he is an almost perfect symbol of ZZS’s political continuity – someone who might bring a tear to the eye of the party’s more conservative supporters as they remember the “good old days” when no one in ZZS tried to hide Aivars Lembergs’ involvement and influence.
ZZS and its problem with political consistency
The issue, of course, is the Istanbul Convention.
When Evika Siliņa’s government was being formed in 2023, ZZS was among the political forces prepared to ratify the Istanbul Convention with an accompanying declaration on the values enshrined in Latvia’s Constitution. In reality, this was the price the party paid for a seat at Siliņa’s government table.
At the time, Viktors Valainis publicly spoke about the need to dispel the fears and political intrigue surrounding the document. Less than two years later, ZZS had completely reversed its position. Together with the opposition, the party supported Latvia’s withdrawal from the Convention, while Uldis Augulis spoke of the “promotion of left-wing ideology” – even though, when he himself served as Welfare Minister, he had publicly explained that the concept of “social gender” did not oblige Latvia to change how its legal or education systems understand gender.
From an electoral perspective, this reversal could help ZZS compete for conservative voters. But ZZS is far from alone in that political space, and the competition for voters is fierce. The National Alliance, Latvia First (LPV), to some extent the United List (AS), and other political forces are already competing for the same electorate.
Moreover, an SKDS poll conducted after all the controversy surrounding the Convention showed that the issue was largely unimportant to ZZS voters: 16% were not interested in it at all, 38% were rather uninterested, while only 7% were very interested.
In essence, ZZS paid a high political price over an issue that is not a priority for its traditional electorate.
GKR – a stepping stone for ZZS in Riga
More than a few observers also see a lack of principle in ZZS’s cooperation with Oļegs Burovs’ Honor to Serve Riga (GKR), although the partnership is rooted in pragmatism.
GKR and ZZS already ran together in the 2025 Riga City Council election, while in this Saeima election Burovs is number three on the ZZS candidate list in Riga. Burovs can give ZZS something it has historically lacked – a recognisable Riga politician and access to voters for whom the traditional identity of a farmers’ party means very little. When a party is hovering around the 5% threshold, even a relatively modest boost in Riga can be extremely valuable.
However, the more representatives of different political groups ZZS brings into its ranks, the harder it becomes to answer a basic question: what exactly is ZZS?
Is it a party representing rural and farmers’ interests? A conservative force? A centrist party of pragmatic managers? Lembergs’ partner? Burovs’ Riga platform? A modernised economic party led by Valainis? Does the voter even understand who lives in this ZZS garden and what the party’s ideology ultimately is?
ZZS should not be written off yet. Latvian voters have survived even bigger political scandals. The party also has a powerful traditional trump card – a strong regional organisation, well-known municipal politicians and an electorate that tends to be more disciplined than opinion polls sometimes suggest.
Yet if one had to name a ZZS achievement that is easy for everyone to understand, ironically it would be the raising of minimum income thresholds and benefits, which Uzulnieks actively championed, efforts to introduce a basic pension, opposition to raising the retirement age, and the party’s willingness to freeze public officials’ salaries.
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