Let Me Underwhelm You

This is the time when – for want of anything better to report and staffed mainly by interns and juniors – the newspapers turn to their predictions for the new year. One only needs to look at last year’s efforts to realise the pointlessness of the whole exercise.

As far as I can recall, no-one predicted a giant tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan, a wave of revolutions across the Arab world, the deaths of the vile Gadaffi and Kim-Jong-Il,  the effective collapse of the eurozone, large-scale popular protests on the streets of Moscow or – closer to home –  the dissolution of the Latvian parliament by presidential decree.

Notwithstanding this fact, there is a tendency for those taking part in this guessing game to venture something fairly dramatic if ultimately fence-sitting for their predictions; say, that the pace of such and such a reform will pick up or that such and such a politician will win a scheduled election. If they are feeling really bold they might even venture that a certain economy will go into recession (though this carries the risk of being factually verifiable) or that sportsman A will beat sportsman B at last.

Therefore for my own piece of worthless crystal ballery I am going against the grain and hereby predict that 2012 will be extremely boring. It will go down in an obscure and rarely-thumbed appendix to the pages of history as one of the dullest, most purgatorial years in memory during which not much happened and what little did happen wasn’t of much interest anyway.

The London Olympics will be a yawn, enlivened neither by sporting excellence or terrorist outrage. They will be the most tedious Olympics since Atlanta, which was like watching live coverage of a coma.

Eurocrats will continue to tell us they have fixed the Eurozone throughout most of the year, their assertions losing resonance with every iteration like a timid echo reverberating through a particularly large and black cave. The zone will muddle on but more by reason of neglect than any chest-thumping action from Merkozy, both of whom will fade away from lack of interest.

This does at least point us towards one of the unexpected positives 2012 will deliver: repeated illustrations of the huge gap between what politicians say they can do and what they really can do. They will keep saying they have done great things, made dynamic, bold decisions and so forth, and then all the evidence will point towards them having made not one jot of difference. This in turn will prompt them to make even more dramatic statements in an attempt to gain our attention which inevitably will ring even more hollow.

In this regard they will come to be viewed like the ratings agencies, whose continued presence on this planet is contrary to the very Darwinian principles that seem to underpin their own world-views. Their failure to wake up to the biggest economic crash in decades until it was raining onto their roofs should have killed them off but still they pontificate and preen, weighing the virtues of nations in their silly little scales. In a way I wish there would be something as dramatic as another huge collapse so they could miss it again and finally prove themselves to be an evolutionary dead end. Sadly, they will be saved by the fact that things will just about manage to stagger on, though perhaps a few investors bored senseless by their outpourings will start actually researching their own investments for a bit of fun instead of placing it all in the hands of these hucksters with superior graph-making technology.

The Baltic economies will be completely flat, and so will the political scene. With nothing much left to trim, policymakers will be  left sitting on their hands and waiting for the weather to improve, though their remains a slight danger that they might start daydreaming and implement a few crackpot laws to give themselves some remnant of self-justification.

In Estonia Andrus Ansip’s main headache will be the lack of snow  which prevents him skiing more often. In Latvia, a challenger to Valdis Dombrovskis might emerge, but everyone will treat him with such indifference that he will soon crawl back into his burrow leaving Domby to do what he does best: carry on quietly.

Down in Lithuania, an uninvolving election campaign will result in Andrius Kubilius retaining power but with a reduced majority and an even messier coalition. This will come as a relief as no-one really wants to take over from him anyway in case things take a turn for the worse and they are held responsible. Kubilius will spend the first few months of the year trying to come up with a new joke he can use in place of the “We will win the basketball tournament” gag he was spinning for the first three years of his tenure.

It goes without saying that work will not have begun on the Visaginas nuclear power plant by the end of the year and that what little enthusiasm remains for it after Poland pulled the plug will continue to trickle away, like guests leaving a new year party at which the food, drink and company was all too tedious to endure until midnight.

So even though 2012 will be an absolute snore in terms of news, it will offer us plenty of opportunity to better ourselves doing far more interesting things. If you’ve ever wanted to learn a new language, knit a jumper or grow some roses, this is the year for you!

Normal Service Will Be Resumed…

…shortly.

Nothing has been posted here for the last few months for the simple reason that I’ve been writing a book. Yes, a proper one, intended to be read via ink and paper rather than the wanly glowing screen before you now.

So, if any publishers out there would like to start the bidding war for this sure-fire international bestseller about, er, some idiots in Latvia – do I really need to say any more – then that would be just dandy. I particularly recommend obtaining the film rights, preferably for a six-figure sum.

Once that’s all taken care of in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be back from the new year with more blog posts – with the usual caveat that they are essentially the stuff that’s either not good enough or not appealing enough to be printed in any real outlets.

Anyway, it’s not as if I’ve missed anything major since my last blog post, other than the dissolution of parliament, a referendum, general election, new government, bank collapse etc.

Meanwhile I’ll still be updating the links to many features that have appeared elsewhere, which you can read by clicking ‘Examples’ above.

Will He, Won’t He Join The Dance?

Divided we stand - Dombrovskis and Zatlers

When President Valdis Zatlers announced his intention to dissolve parliament on May 28, he became briefly the most popular Latvian president on record. He took his dramatic action – voice trembling with emotion – ostensibly as a final stand against the influence of oligarchy. Yet around six weeks later, he might be about to help hand power back to the very forces he was supposedly attacking.

Zatlers’ term expires on May 7, whereupon he will be replaced by Andris Berzins, a wealthy former banker who if not regarded as a fully-formed oligarch himself does have links to some of the “pure” oligarchs. Berzins’ true colours remain to be seen. On the one hand is the clearly questionable way he used around a quarter of a million euros of EU funds to help build a “guest house” that is his home and his curious decision to get married to his long-term partner, in secret, just a few days before his inauguration. On the other hand, some of the new recruits to his staff are capable professionals who should do a decent job.

But the main question now concerns Zatlers, not Berzins. The day after he steps down, Zatlers is due to reveal his future plans. He has already dropped broad hints about forming his own political party. Such a move would, I believe, be a catastrophic decision that ultimately would merely retrench the oligarchs’ hold in a slightly different form.

In mid-June Zatlers was offered what amounted to an unconditional offer to join the Vienotiba political bloc headed by PM Valdis Dombrovskis. It even came with a promise to put Zatlers at the top of their electoral list if he so desired, giving him a guaranteed seat in the next parliament. Vienotiba is clearly the political force with which Zatlers is most closely aligned, even if their thoughts do not always overlap – but then the thoughts of the three different political parties constituting Vienotiba don’t always overlap, either.

Of course, Vienotiba’s offer wasn’t just goodwill. They know full well that having Zatlers’ name on their ballot paper would not only ensure they emerged from September’s election as the largest party, it would even give them a shot at an unprecedented overall majority. Failing that, they could form a coalition with the National Alliance bloc which has proven far more cooperative as an opposition party than their ZZS and oligarch-influenced coalition partners have been in government. The National Alliance is likely to increase its representation in the next parliament into double figures from its current 7 MPs and may even double its numbers.

Meanwhile the oligarch-run PLL party is clearly a busted flush. It knows as much and is unlikely even to bother contesting the elections. Its leaders will instead seek ways to grow their influence in ZZS and Saskanas Centrs. So to a certain extent the oligarch problem  will be dealt with anyway – only the influence of Aivars Lembergs within ZZS will remain a pressing concern and a likely dip in ZZS’s showing at the polls to below 20 seats may even be enough to get the decent ZZS members – of whom there are a few such as Raimonds Vejonis – asking whether they might be better off without the weight of Lembergs around their necks.

So even without any action from Zatlers we would see the number of political forces in parliament reduced to four from the current five, and the exit of most overt oligarch involvement.

However, it is looking increasingly likely that instead of demanding that Vienotiba finally amalgamate into a single party in order to attract his support (which would have been an effective way of getting them to stop their bickering) he is going to form his own political party. Ironically,Vienotiba would be the biggest losers of such action which would effectively split the centre-right vote and hand the election to Saskanas Centrs which can rely on its core vote even with its most bankable asset, Riga mayor Nils Usakovs, off the scene for health reasons.

SC, which likes to portray itself as a left-wing party but is just as in thrall to wealthy backers and vested interests as the other parties – should then be able to form a government with ZZS. Admittedy this would be historic inasmuch as it would be the first time a “Russian” party had been in power in post-independence Latvia. But the smarter members of SC must know that they would destroy their claim to be standing up for the common man (they are already on dangerous ground after backing for Berzins’ presidential bid).

At ‘best’ this would merely perpetuate Lembergs’ influence in such vital areas as transport. At worst I think  a government constituted in such a manner could actually prompt fairly widespread civil disobedience. Either way, it would be hard to imagine the government lasting more than a year, returning us back to where we are right now.

An alternative, less likely scenario might see SC and Vienotiba brought together by a Zatlers acting as “honest broker” and recycling his thoughts about national unity and the like. It would be interesting but would be difficult if Zatlers had just stolen a large share of Vienotiba’s vote and prompted its break-up intosmall parties again. The National Alliance would never get involved in a government involving SC and would effectively become the main opposition party (ZZS would be rudderless in opposition) leading to gradual radicalisation of the political landscape.

But even without taking the parliamentary shakedown into account, I question the wisdom of a “Zatlers party”. He found approval as a figurehead, not a politician. His main quality – that he seems like an honest man – won’t stretch all that far in daily political life and will be eroded as he inevitably seeks compromise and accommodation with other parties. He lacks charisma, is not a great public speaker (his dissolution statement was endearing for its naive directness more than its rhetoric) and sometimes gets flustered in debates. Stripped of presidential privelege his opponents will relish the opportunity of getting stuck into him.

Moreover, where exactly is the pool of undiscovered talent to form the backbone of his party? At the moment it seems to consist of attempts to woo a few newer members of Vienotiba (so again, why not simply join them?) and some other fairly prominent figures from NGOs and the like who are understandably lukewarm about quitting their jobs to climb aboard a bandwagon which will likely have one brief hurrah. For whoever does sign up will have to cope with the fact that whatever name his party has, it will effectively be the Zatlers party and all of its support will depend on the popularity of its leader – a popularity that will never, ever be as high as it was on May 28.

Finally and perhaps slightly cynically, Zatlers might also consider that in four years’ time he should have an excellent chance of regaining the presidency – provided he doesn’t  get too directly involved in politics in the meantime.