Latvian PM Krisjanis Karins speaks in Riga, Latvia, on Jan. 23, 2019, as new center-right coalition government is approved.Janis/Press Association. All rights reserved.
After a long string of negotiations, since the parliamentary elections of October 2018, a new coalition government was formed in Latvia (January 23, 2019). The new and rather heterogeneous government comprises three conservative/liberal parties of the centre-right (New Unity, New Conservatives and Development/For!), one national conservative party (National Alliance/NA) and most deputies from the populist Who Owns the State?/KPV party. This piece concentrates on the persistence of the cordon sanitaire around the, nominally centre-left, Saskaņa/Harmony party (the party that traditionally garners the bulk of the ethnic Russian vote); the weakening role of National Alliance as a partner in the governing coalition; and the rapidly emerging KPV.
The cordon sanitaire around Harmony
In contrast to, say, the ethnic Hungarian minorities across the Carpathian basin, the ethnic Russian communities of Latvia and Estonia tend to rally around parties with a civic profile (Latvia: Saskaņa/Harmony; Estonia: Eesti Keskerakond/Centre Party) instead of an explicitly ethnic one. Harmony’s appeal to ethnic Russians, as well as its calls for a foreign policy of appeasement vis-à-vis Russia, has rendered political rivals skeptical over the party’s motives and reliability. Harmony secured 19.80% of the vote and emerged as the strongest party, in its own right, in the October 2018 elections. This was also the case in the 2011 and the 2014 elections, where it garnered 28.36% and 23% of the vote respectively. Despite this successful electoral performance in a series of electoral contests, the (predominantly) Latvian parties maintain a cordon sanitaire around Harmony in a way that was once again manifest in the latest coalition government.
