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MOSCOW – The Baltic State of Latvia, ruled since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 by political forces inclined towards Europe and wary of Russia, is became Sunday the last country hit by the rise of populism with the announcement of election results showing strong support for pro-Russia and anti-establishment parties.
The results dealt a severe blow to the leading politicians and paved the way for coalition negotiations that could, for the first time, lead to a government including the Harmony Center, a friend party of Moscow, which had up to this year a cooperation agreement with the ruling party, the Russian party. United Russia.
Harmony not only garnered close to 20 percent of the vote, the largest number in the general election held on Saturday, but was second in a new anti-establishment party. The party, KPV LV – Who Owns the State – is led by Artuss Kaimins, a former flamboyant actor turned undisciplined political man whose critics in Latvia treat him as "our Donald Trump".
Public discontent with Latvian traditional parties has been fueled in recent months by a series of scandals that have left the governor of the central bank under investigation for corruption and led to the bankruptcy of ABLV, the largest bank from the country. In February, the US Treasury released a report describing the bank as a sprawling money-laundering business.
Mr. Kaimins' party won 14.1% of the vote and another new group, the New Conservative anti-corruption party, 13.6%, which means that Harmony could find partners in the coalition that would allow him to form a government. This goal has escaped the party in the past; although he was the most successful in the general elections, the main parties refused to include him in the negotiations because of his ties with Moscow.
The alternative, Usakovs said, is "a coalition of xenophobes and gay rights activists" that he said would only survive "two or three weeks".
But getting a role in the government will always be a difficult struggle for Usakovs. The centrist and right wing parties, deeply divided by their personality and rival ambitions, are generally united by their hostility to Harmony and could form a coalition that would prevent it from entering the government again.
Outgoing Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis, whose party finished sixth, warned that an alliance between populists and Harmony would be "very dangerous" because it would imply "a fairly radical change in Latvia's position vis-à-vis of the European Union and our security issues ".
The country's leader, Mr. Kaimins, who had formed his party just two years ago when he sat in parliament in an independent capacity, scandalized the country's political elite. He filmed the parliamentary committee meetings and broadcast them live, denounced the European Union and his fellow legislators as corrupt and pledged to "personally fire" broadcasters who opposed him.
Harmony, a party that has traditionally benefited from The large Russian-speaking minority in Latvia recently worked hard to pretend to be a tool of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, trying to portray himself as a Western-style social-democratic party. He rejected calls from pro-Russian radical groups asking Latvia to leave NATO and the European Union, but called for the lifting of sanctions against Moscow.
About a quarter of Latvia's two million inhabitants speak Russian and derive most of its information from Russian media, which regularly report that ethnic Latvians are persecuting Russian-speaking compatriots. A recent study found that 82% of Latvian-speaking Latvians watched Kremlin-controlled Russian TV channels.
