All three presidential candidates in Latvia – Combined List founder and businessman Uldis Pīlēns, Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkēvičs and public management expert Elīna Pinto comply with the requirements laid down in the Constitution and the Law on the Election of the President and, accordingly, may apply for this position, as concluded by the Saeima Mandates, Ethics and Submissions Committee.
The committee’s chairman Jānis Vucāns reports all received reports mention that candidates meet the requirements listed in the law.
Any Latvian citizen who is at least 40 years old on Election Day and has no other country’s citizenship can be elected as President of Latvia.
At the same time, the law states that a person with limited capacity to act, serving a sentence in a place of imprisonment, has been punished for an intentional criminal offence cannot be elected as president,
except for cases when a person is rehabilitated and his or her criminal record is removed.
A citizen who served in USSR, Latvian SSR or other countries’ security, intelligence or counter-intelligence services cannot be elected as president either.
It is also not possible to elect a person who after the 13th of January, 1991, worked in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the International Front of the Workers of the Latvian SSR, the Joint Council of Labour Collectives, the Organization of War and Labour Veterans, the All-Latvian Society Rescue Committee or its regional committees.
People punished with prohibition to run in Saeima, European Parliament, city and county councils, except for cases when a person is rehabilitated or their criminal record removed, are also not allowed to be elected as Latvia’s president.
Presidential elections will take place in the Saeima on the last day of May.
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