One of the most prominent events in Latvia’s domestic politics this week was the clash between Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs (AS) and Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava (NA) over the migration plan. Does this signal the emergence of a serious rift between the two political forces? BNN put the question to Filips Rajevskis, political scientist and co-owner of Mediju tilts.
“Relations between the partners are extremely tense. In reality, all the political parties currently forming the coalition are, in one way or another, competing with each other. The strong polling numbers showing public support for the United List create a certain degree of envy and insecurity among the others,” the political scientist explains.
Filips Rajevskis says that until now Latvia’s problem has been the absence of a clear leader in the polls, resulting in what he describes as little more than “feeble political jostling and elbowing”.
“Now, however, there is one clear leader whom everyone sees and feels as a competitor in a segment important to their own party. For the National Alliance, the Union of Greens and Farmers and Unity, the United List is a competitor. Anyone who understands even a little about politics also understands that such a high rating has not appeared out of nowhere. AS is not only mobilising undecided voters but also drawing voters away from other parties. Naturally, tensions then rise. One of the first thoughts is: how do you hit the leader so that he does not get too far ahead of everyone else? How do you slow him down? That is when parties start looking for reasons to fight one another.”
Rajevskis stresses that fighting migration is extremely important to the National Alliance.
In fact, it has effectively become the party’s number one campaign issue ahead of the election.
“That is why they are particularly sensitive to any attempt to take this issue away from them or create the impression that they are failing to deal with it. They want to show their voters decisive, tough and continuous action. This means intensifying the campaign through communication focused on action – communicating not only what you want to do, but demonstrating through your actions that it is actually being done. In my view, the National Alliance campaigned very successfully through this dispute over the decision and the migration plan. It is clear that the plan will be adopted, and the fact that the prime minister apologised over the clash allows them to record this as a successful campaign episode and use it as an example: look, this is how we fought.”
Asked what it means that the prime minister described the interior minister’s efforts to restrict immigration as a “tantrum of a petulant kindergartener” and used several other harsh expressions, Rajevskis says Kulbergs has, to some extent, sensed that the public expects precisely this kind of toughness from him.
“Perhaps he has sensed that the public likes this more aggressive style of communication, so he uses stronger words and comparisons to illustrate his focus on action. He constantly says: I will act, I have to act, we will act. He is trying to present himself as a politician who is strongly action-oriented. On migration, his interests overlap with those of the National Alliance – both sides want to demonstrate decisive and strong action. That creates competition, emotions and, ultimately, poorly considered and undiplomatic statements.”
That this approach does indeed appeal to voters can also be seen in polling conducted at the end of August by the social research agency Latvijas fakti in cooperation with SIA Faktu logs. In contrast to the SKDS poll, these figures indicate fairly convincingly that the Union of Greens and Farmers would not be left outside parliament, with 6.9% of respondents saying they would vote for the party.
The United List received support from 15.6% of all respondents. Latvia First would receive 8.3%, the National Alliance 7.3%, the Progressives 7.1%, Sovereign Power/New Unity 6.3%, while New Unity, the winner of the previous election, would round out the parties clearing the 5% threshold with 5.9%.
Rajevskis notes that if these polling figures translated into election results, the current coalition would have a very comfortable majority, potentially amounting to around 60 seats in parliament.
What would change most significantly would be the internal balance of power.
“The position currently held by Unity with 25 seats could be taken over by the United List with a large number of mandates. Importantly, the other partners would still matter, but they would no longer be able to hold the entire coalition hostage so easily. There would not be such an iron dependence on every single partner as there was under Evika Siliņa’s government, when at times everything depended on every single vote – two people say ‘no’, and the majority disappears.”
The political scientist also points out that a different methodology was used for this survey compared with the previous one. Specifically, a combined method involving face-to-face interviews and telephone surveys allows for better sample representativeness and more accurate results than an online survey.
Asked whether all this political “sabre-rattling” between the United List and the National Alliance could result in the two political forces being unable to work together after the election, Rajevskis rejects the suggestion.
“No. The election will pass, the dust will settle, and pragmatic politics will take over. From a post-election perspective, I would say this is a complete trifle. They shouted at each other, apologised and forgot about it – I see no problem there. So far, none of this infighting suggests that any of the political parties involved in these conflicts has crossed the boundaries of political decency.”
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