Parliamentary elections were held in Latvia on Saturday and the party with the most votes went to the centre-right party of outgoing Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins: a result that reaffirms the Baltic country’s hitherto highly anti-Russian position on foreign policy and favors the invasion of Ukraine a tightening of international sanctions and a military strengthening of the borders of NATO countries further east, such as Latvia itself.
However, the outcome of the vote could deepen divisions within the Latvian population. A quarter of the country’s 1.9 million inhabitants are Russian speakers, and a tightening of the government’s stance on Russia could have an impact on this minority.
Nuova Unità, the centre-right party led by Karins, called Jauna Vienotiba in Latvian, received 19 percent of the vote after the count has now been completed. It is therefore very likely that the prime minister will lead a new coalition government, but he will have to look for new allies because overall the parties in the outgoing majority have only won 42 of the 100 seats in parliament (23 go to the New Unity). Meetings between party leaders and President Egils Levits begin Monday leading to the formation of the new government.
Armonia (Saskaņa in Latvian), winner of the 2018 election and two previous elections that received only 4.7 percent of the vote, is unlikely to remain in parliament. Despite its past electoral successes, the centre-left Armonia party has always been kept out of government alliances because it was officially allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. Now his consensus has plummeted: he is believed to have lost supporters, both among ethnic Latvian voters scared by the war in Ukraine and ethnic Russians disappointed by the party leader’s recent repositioning, who criticized Putin.
Latvia has a 214-kilometer border with Russia and, like Estonia and Lithuania, has been part of NATO since 2004.
Karins has been Prime Minister since 2019 and also holds American citizenship: he was born in Delaware to a Latvian couple who emigrated when Latvia was taken over by the Soviet Union after World War II, and has lived in Riga since 1997. His party found growing support strongly influenced by the war in Ukraine: New Unity is one of the most important political forces, which is demanding tougher sanctions against Russia from the European Union.