New Unity (JV) political party’s prime minister candidate Evika Siliņa still intends to speak with the Combined List (AS) party and will wait for them to decide whether they want to be part of her proposed four-party coalition with JV, Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) and Progressive Party (PRO).
Siliņa is prepared to listen to representatives from AS. At the same time, the politicians is prepared to “move forward” with the government’s creation regardless. AS, she said, need to decide what they want.
On Wednesday, the 30th of August, Siliņa met with Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs to report on progress with composition of the new government.
Following Krišjānis Kariņš’s resignation, the president nominated Siliņa as a prime minister candidate and entrusted the creation of the new government to her. She publicly said her plan is to create a five-party coalition. At the same time, she admits it is unlikely it will be possible to compose such a large coalition.
Evika Siliņa offered AS to join JV, ZZS and PRO in the new coalition. According to her, the National Alliance (NA) has effectively pushed itself out of the coalition by drawing its red line in regards to the possibility of working with PRO.
NA, on the other hand, does not agree that this is the case. The party claims they are ready to join the coalition and that PRO should be “left overboard”.
Instead of agreeing with this government model, AS promised to present their own government model. So far AS has been in favour of preserving the existing coalition, which consists of JV, AS and NA. If the coalition is to be expanded, however, AS has made it clear they would rather go with NA.
Last week parties mostly focused on the two possible four-party coalition models. Both include JV, ZZS and AS. The point of contention is whether to invite NA or PRO to join the government as the fourth party.
Also read: Combined List part decided to pause coalition negotiations because of National Alliance, ZZS politician says