Representative of the Combined List Edvards Smiltēns was elected as the speaker of the 14th Saeima.
The other candidate for this post was Stabilitātei! political party leader Aleksejs Rosļikovs.
Representative of the vote-counting committee Rihards Kols announced that Smiltēns received 82 votes and Rosļikovs received 11.
Smiltēns thanked his fellow Saeima deputies for their support and expressed his gratitude to the 13th Saeima speaker Ināra Mūrniece, calling her one of the best speakers in Saeima’s history.
The new Saeima speaker stressed the consequent approach Mūrniece had, the high bar she set for Saeima speakers, organisation of Saeima’s work under very difficult conditions and representation of Latvia on an international arena.
Smiltēns previously worked in the 10th, 11th and 12th Saeimas, when he was a representative of Unity. In 2011 the politician was elected a parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture. In 2014 he was elected as parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Education and Science. Smiltēns ran in the 13th Saeima elections from the list of the Latvian Association of Regions, but the party failed to gather enough votes to enter the Saeima.
In 2020 he ran in the snap Riga City Council elections as a candidate from the National Alliance. Since then he has worked as vice-chairman of Riga City Council.