Electoral Panorama / Panorama Electoral

Voters in the Republic of Latvia head to the polls on Saturday, October 7, 2006, to choose members of the national unicameral legislature, the Saeima.

The elections for the 9^th Saeima will be Latvia's fifth parliamentary poll since the country regained its independence in 1991 - along with neighboring Estonia and Lithuania - after fifty-one years of annexation by the Soviet Union.

Legislative mandates in the 100-seat Saeima, which is elected by universal suffrage for a four-year term of office, are allocated in five multi-member constituencies by the pure Sainte-Laguë method of proportional representation, among lists polling at least five percent of the nationwide vote. Voters may indicate a preference for candidates within a list, or cross out the name of a candidate - the latter practice a holdover from the Soviet era.

The five percent barrier notwithstanding, Latvia's party system has been characterized by a very high degree of political fragmentation. Since 1993 no party has held an absolute majority of Saeima seats, nor for that matter come even close to attaining one. As a result, Latvia has been ruled by a succession of short-lived coalition governments: since independence in 1991, Latvia has had a dozen cabinets, lasting on average little more than a year in office, with the longest-lived holding power for two-and-a-half years.

Cabinet instability is hardly new to Latvia: during the country's first period of independence between the two world wars, there were eighteen governments from 1918 to 1934, which on average lasted less than a year in office. This state of affairs came to an end in 1934, when Kārlis Ulmanis assumed dictatorial powers, ruling the country until it was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940.

However, the election in 1999 (by the Saeima) of Dr. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga as Latvia's first-ever female president has brought the country a measure of stability. President Vīķe-Freiberga - who was born in Latvia but grew up in exile and eventually became a psychology professor at Canada's French-speaking University of Montreal - emerged as a widely respected figure, and was re-elected to office in 2003.

During the long Soviet occupation, Latvians came close to becoming a minority in their own country: by 1989, they made up just 52% of Latvia's population, while Russians constituted the second largest ethnic group at 34%. However, since independence the proportion of Latvians has been gradually rising - by 2005 it stood at 59% - while the Russian population has declined to less than 29% (and in the process the country's overall population has dropped by more than ten percent). Still, one of the major problems confronting Latvia is the integration of what remains a sizable number of Russian speakers, many of whom lack Latvian citizenship and therefore can't vote in elections. This problem also has a foreign policy dimension: Russia routinely accuses Latvia of discriminating against ethnic Russians, and relations between the two countries remain tense.

Given its poor relations with Russia - not to mention the traumatic memories of the 1940-91 annexation to the U.S.S.R. - it's hardly surprising that Latvia eagerly pursued membership in the European Union (EU) as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), securing both in 2004. However, the EU accession referendum held the preceding year highlighted differences between the Latvian- and Russian-speaking communities, as results suggested ethnic Latvians voted overwhelmingly in favor of EU membership, while ethnic Russians entitled to vote were just as staunchly opposed to it.

In fact, Russian speakers who can vote usually line up behind left-wing parties advocating better relations with Moscow. However, since the first post-independence parliamentary election in 1993, right-of-center parties have usually held a majority of seats in the Saeima, although the party system has experienced major changes in every election.

In the 2002 Saeima elections, the right-of-center Latvia's Way, which had been up to that point one of the country's major parties - as well as a coalition partner in every government since 1993 - fell just below the five percent threshold and lost its parliamentary representation; the left-wing Social Democrats were wiped out as well. New Era, a center-right party led by Einars Repše emerged as the largest group, ahead of For Human Rights in a United Latvia, a coalition of several left-wing parties which polled strongly among Russian speakers; the right-of-center People's Party - previously the largest party - finished a close third, followed by two new center-right groups, the Union of Greens and Farmers and the First Party of Latvia.

After the election, Repše formed a four-party coalition government, but he only lasted just over a year in office. Since late 2004, Latvia is ruled by a center-right minority administration headed by Aigars Kalvītis of the People's Party.