This week, public attention has centred on the question of whether the Society Integration Foundation (SIF) should continue to exist in its current form. What exactly should be done — should the SIF be reorganised and its programmes transferred to the competent ministries, or should the governing coalition be trusted when it says that a full audit of the organisation is entirely sufficient? Ahead of the holidays, Mediju tilts co-owner and political analyst Filips Rajevskis was also asked: what really dominates Latvia’s political landscape — statesmen or mere politicians?
According to Rajevskis, the battle over the SIF is an ideological one. “At this moment, the SIF has, to some extent, been shaped into a propaganda ministry — it is used to control the media as well as to build a set of ideologically aligned NGOs that are then used for political purposes.”
Asked whether reorganising the SIF and shielding it from political influence is realistically possible, or whether it would be more reasonable to liquidate the institution entirely, the political analyst notes that, given the degree of bureaucratisation and the way decisions are made, it is often much simpler and more productive to abolish such an institution and start from scratch.
“This constant patching of holes only results in the institution becoming even more deformed.
I think that in this case the right approach would be to liquidate it and see whether we can do without it.”
Rajevskis also points to the duplication of SIF functions. “For example, the SIF has support programmes for families — but that is the responsibility of the Ministry of Welfare. Yet again we have created an institution that duplicates the functions of another, just to hide political needs underneath: to fund ideologically favourable NGOs and to keep the media in check.”
When asked whether Latvia’s politics is led by statesmen or merely politicians, Rajevskis replies: “History shows who is a politician and who is a statesman. Many statesmen were not appreciated in their own time, while political opportunists were often overrated. Politics is the art of compromise — one compromise after another. It’s like chess, where not only statesmanlike thinking is needed, but also the sharpness of a chess player who understands his goal and where the moves lead.”
“That is the fundamental difference between a statesman and a political operator — the statesman can play this chess game and has real goals. And then comes the question: how many of our politicians have real goals they want to achieve, and how many simply want to remain in this privileged position?”
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