Latvia’s president lashed out at lawmakers and threatened to dissolve parliament after more than 40 people were injured in the worst rioting since the Baltic country split from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian President Valdis Zatlers said on Wednesday he would disband the legislature by March 31 unless lawmakers agree to a series of reforms to help restore political and economic order in the crisis-hit nation.
Latvia’s economy was once the fastest-growing in the EU, but it has undergone a dramatic reversal and is expected to contract 5 percent this year. The central bank burned through about one-third of its reserves to defend the currency, and unemployment rocketed from 6 percent to 7 percent last month.
PHOTO: AFP
International lenders including the EU, the IMF and Nordic countries have pledged US$10.5 billion in financial assistance to help the nation of 2.3 million recover.
Zatlers’ ultimatum came a day after an anti-government demonstration that included an estimated 10,000 participants turned violent when scores of angry protesters tried to storm parliament and clashed with police.
More than 40 people were injured, mostly protesters, but also six police officers and eight military police, Latvian interior ministry spokeswoman Sigita Pildava said. Police detained 106 people.
The rampage echoes similar clashes in Greece and Bulgaria, where protesters vented their anger at deteriorating economic conditions and widespread corruption.
In Latvia, government and opposition leaders blamed each other for the violence, but Zatlers said politicians must address “the catastrophic collapse of trust in authorities and state officials” that was expressed at the demonstration.
His ultimatum surprised many in the Baltic state considering the current coalition placed him in the president’s chair. In Latvia, the president is elected by parliament.
Latvians are irate about the country’s deepening recession, and many blame Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis’ center-right government for the economic woes.
Zatlers demanded lawmakers amend the Constitution to give voters the right to dissolve the legislature between elections and called for the creation of a council to oversee Latvia’s economic recovery program.
He also told Godmanis that his Cabinet had to restructure the way the government works, including minimizing the number of ministerial posts.
“Both parliament and the government have lost touch with voters,” Zatlers told reporters.
The violence started as a peaceful anti-government demonstration ended in Riga’s historic Old Town. Most of the demonstrators left the area but about 100 of them turned violent and tried to storm the parliament building. Riot police kept them away, using tear gas and truncheons.
The rioters pelted officers with cobblestones and chunks of ice and vandalized three police vehicles. They smashed windows of boutiques, the finance ministry and a bank, and looted a liquor store.
Godmanis told the LNT TV station on Wednesday that protest organizers bear responsibility for the violence, citing their decision to hold the rally despite tensions over the deepening economic crisis.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS