After long and heated discussions the Saeima finally passed in the final reading the Law on National Defence on Wednesday, the 5th of April.
Previously it was reported that the law makes military service mandatory for citizens – men of the age of 18 years. It is planned for citizens who have reached the age of 18 and continue studying at an education institution, except for higher education, will be required to undergo military service after graduating.
Certain coalition and opposition deputies said most youngsters are prepared to
“serve in the name of their country”. However, the doubts are about the way mobilisation and recruitment will be organised.
Saeima deputy Aleksejs Rosļikovs from For Stability! political party said the existing law “is covered up with the idea of national defence” and is an attack on children and youngsters. “The National Alliance has been in charge of the country’s demography for a long time. And in this particular law it is stated: a child is not an obstacle for you not to serve,” he said, adding that his party suggests relieving young parents from military service. The politician stressed that, considering the costs of living, if one of the parents leaves to serve in the military, the remaining parent may experience difficulties with maintaining a child.
Saeima deputy Edmunds Zivtiņš from Latvia in First Place voiced shock over what he heard from representatives from the Ministry of Defrence in regards to recruitment of young parents. “The moment the discussion veered towards ways to support young parents that already have at least one child, potentially relieving them of military service,
the ministry’s representative said: “So what will there be, people will just make babies and refuse to serve!?”,” said Zivtiņš.
He also explained that, aside from VAD law, “young families and young parents already have no motivation to create larger families”.
The parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Defence Jānis Eglīts and Saeima deputy Jānis Dombrava from the National Alilance stressed that the current redaction of the military service law provides that parents who have a child of one and a half years of age are allowed to postpone military service for a longer period of time. Eglīts explained that young parents will be able to postpone military service for no long than until the age of 26 years. He also said even citizens who have children must learn knowledge and skills for national defence. “We cannot punish people this way, but I would like to remind you all that this requirement was in the Soviet army, when people who have two children were allowed not to serve in the army. Perhaps now it is the time to move away from the Soviet era,” said Eglīts.
Opposition deputy Linda Liepiņa from Latvia in First Place said Eglīts’ comment about the Soviet army is not a good enough argument to recruit your parents into military service. “Mr. Eglīts, your comment that we will have something good here just because we will do something differently than we did in the Soviet era is flimsy,” she said.
Certain members of the coalition said the arguments from the opposition that VAD and its effect on demography in Latvia are baseless. Rihards Kols from the National Alliance explained that “Latvia is not the only European country that has poor demographic indexes”.
“So your arguments are baseless. Come up and tell us from the tribune why children in those countries have a future and why we won’t have a future if we pass this law,”
he said.
Additionally, coalition deputies reminded the opposition that all parents have the option to sign up for service in the National Guard if they don’t want to go through the 11 months-long military service.
It is planned for military service to be allowed to be completed in a five-year period of time, studying an officer programme for university and college students and military service in a unit of National Armed Forces with training and service task completion for a period of time no less than 180 days.
Individuals required to undergo military service, but are unable to serve in the army because of personal opinions, religious reasons or political views, will be allowed to undergo alternative service. Alternative service involves 11 months serving at an institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Defence.
A citizen who is studying to become a doctor, assistant doctor or nurse will be able to pick one of the provided national defence service options regardless of priorities of Latvia’s National Armed Forces. Considering students’ professional and academic skills, they will be able to work in posts related to their chosen fields.
The article of the law that provides criminal liability for dodging the draft also caused heated discussions in the Saeima.
Currently the law provides an administrative penalty for failure to respond to summons from the Ministry of Defence. The penalty is a warning or a fine of EUR 350.
It is also planned that citizens who fail to arrive for checks can be penalised repeatedly.
Zivtiņš explained that this is unacceptable because it is possible for avoidance of military service to happen unintentionally. “Criminal liability for dodging the draft at the age of 18 years. But what if there is some misunderstanding? The young man went abroad or somewhere else – there are a number of different options. This way we will just drop a criminal procedure on his 18-year-old head and he will be punished, because the fact of a dodge is apparent,” said Zivtiņš,
adding that “prosecutors will have a short speech here” and invited deputies to vote against this requirement.
Ainārs Šlesers from Latvia in First Place criticised publicly reported “VAD recruitment lottery”. He said he expects the same outcome as the one for the Receipt lottery. “A lottery is planned to recruit youngsters into military service. But when someone asks who will organise the lottery and how fair it will be, no one can say anything concrete,” stressed Šlesers, adding that this approach could potentially cause a mass departure of youngsters to foreign countries.
“A lottery is casino by definition. So we’ll use casino methods to recruit youngsters.
And those who disagree with these new casino regulations will be criminally prosecuted,” he said.
Coalition member Andrejs Judins from New Unity reminded that this is not about a military service lottery, because “the point is completely different”. He explained that if there are duties provided by the law, it is logical for a person to carry responsibility for failing to fulfil said duties. “I can accept a discussion about criminal or administrative liability, but when it comes to the core of the proposal, it is simple: if there is a duty, there is a penalty for not doing it.”
Saeima deputy Hosams Abu Meri from New Unity stressed that
“the opposition paints the national defence service as some kind of monster that will go from home to home, snatching 18 year-olds for the army”.
Abu Meri invited deputies to not intimidate people with military service and talks about insufficient preparedness of the Latvian army. “I think the Latvian army and Latvian armed forces are very-well prepared on a European level. We don’t need an official army of 100 000. This is why we have this service, which is nothing new. Once, in the Soviet Union, there were poor examples, but now we are in the European Union, and if we continue talking about doing things like Finland, Lithuania and Scandinavia, we are doing exactly that with this legislative draft,” said Abu Meri.
Viktors Valainis made an ironic statement that some deputies “claim that on the 1st of May Latvia will recruit 5 000 – 10 000 youngsters to mandatory army service”. “A lottery will start soon and everything will happen. When this legislative draft was submitted to the 13th Saeima, the annotation mentioned: adoption costs – EUR 800 million. The cost of the legislative draft discussed today is EUR 3 million. This year we will see 300 people. Next year we will see 500,” explained Valainis, adding that ‘looking at the real capacity currently possible, we have to understand that all of today’s discussed regulations will exist on paper only, and most youngsters are prepared to sign up for military service voluntarily’.
He also stressed that one major aspect for VAD is proper motivation, so that youngsters want to serve, rather than be forced into service.
More on this topic: This summer Latvia adopts mandatory national defence service