[9] Darkness As Seen Through Tiresias’ Eyes (6)

Tiresias' eye over Tiresias' house.

The perfect Latvian lobby for Swedish bank interests:

Latvian President Andris Berzins

Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis

Latvian Speaker of the Saeima Valdis Zatlers

Latvia Bank President Ilmars Rimševics

Latvian Finance Minister Andris Vilks

Latvian Economic Minister Vjaceslav Dombrovskis; utt.

The above lobby is the dream team of Swedish banks. The qualifications of said as lobbyists have been written about in previous blogs.

The readers should also note that the above mentioned have their local headquarters in Riga. Their ‘far abroad’ headquarters are likely in Stockholm, Brussels, London, Washington, and not surprisingly other places, among which surprising other is Tallin, Estonia.

Tiresias in his car.

The latter emerged during the past week, when Tomass Ilvess, the newly elected President of Estonia, arrived in Riga for a visit with the Latvian President Andris Berzins a bare seventeen hours after he was elected for the second term to the office.

While the Estonian President insisted that he did not mess in Latvian internal politics, the themes that he brought up for discussion in the press proved anti-populist in the extreme http://www.diena.lv/diena-tv/politika/ilvess-velas-lai-latvijas-valdiba-stradatu-ar-skatu-uz-eiropu-13908597. In other words, I love the Latvian government and want to make sure it loves me, but only on the condition that the Latvian government does not play populist footsee with its people [which maybe contrary to the interests of the Estonian elite].

For one, President Ilvess told the Latvian President and the Latvian people (via the media) that the Estonians had the European Union and NATO dear to their hearts, and would be unpleasantly surprised if the Latvians were to begin to think otherwise http://www.delfi.lv/news/national/politics/ilvess-igaunijas-intereses-ir-latvijas-sadarbiba-ar-es.d?id=41122153 .

Ilvess also came to lobby for the Rail Baltic line, making no mention on the Riga-Moscow line http://bizness.delfi.lv/biznesa_vide/levitins-riga-maskava-projekts-nav-politisks-tam-ir-ekonomisks-pamatojums.d?id=37875151 , the latter which—an East-West orientation—is of greater economic importance for Latvia http://bizness.delfi.lv/biznesa_vide/igaunijas-prezidents-apliecina-rail-baltica-svarigumu-un-mudina-latviju-iesaistities-aktivak.d?id=41197953 .

Tiresias is not completely blind I.

While the Estonian President did not present himself as a messenger of Swedish interests in a direct manner, the message was clear in his elitist and  overtly anti-populist http://ltvzinas.lv/?n=video&id=5452 stance. In short, if the Latvian government does not follow his point of view, which is likely the Swedish point of view, then the Latvian government ought take an as anti-populist stance as his own.

At issue is of course the fact that an improved (fast) Riga-Moscow railway link is more important to the Latvian people than providing the Stockholm-Helsinki-Tallin trail an extension through Riga to Warsaw and the rest of Europe. At the expense of being crude: Surely the state of the Latvian peoples pocketbooks comes before that of Tallin.

The Latvian and Estonian, not to mention Swedish, elitist interest inroads into the interests of the populists of Latvia is what the current coalition forming among political parties is all  about.

President Ilvess of Estonia has many Latvian friends in the Latvian government and media in that they also are anti-populists in extreme.

Let me make a note here about the meaning of “populism”.

Tiresias is not completely blind II.

According to some political experts, the word ‘populism’ is fuzzy in the extreme in most circumstances (the Latvian politicians and media being a case in point in which the word takes on its ‘fuzzy’ meaning). On the other hand, the word takes on a precise meaning the moment its underlying fuzzy meaning connects with a budding or mature antagonism among various groups that may or may not make alliances among themselves as political equivalencies. These political equivalencies may be either right or left leaning. 

In the Latvian case, the establishmentarian anti-populist orientation is based on a fear of populism-left, while it is paradoxically bolstered by accusations of being populist-right by groups that are not ‘native’ to the land for anymore than two generations. Ipso facto, ‘populism’ becomes a word beat upon by the Latvian ‘elites’ rather than the ‘elites’ being criticised and opposed by Latvian populists.

Thus, the 1% of Latvian elites are able to repress 99% of Latvians, so to speak, without much trouble. One reason is that the majority of the 99% continues to identify with the ‘the natives’ who have inhabited Latvia for three generations or more.

Tiresias alive and murdered.

However, suddenly, there comes one President Tomass Ilvess of Estonia to tell the Latvian populists that Estonian-Swedish interests come before theirs; moreover, the Latvian government agrees with the Estonian President because it is oriented much like him. For proof, go to the beginning of the blog and read the list of direct and indirect Swedish lobyists in the Latvian government.

What in the world do the Latvian people do now? Are they not between a rock and a hard place? If they now turn from the ‘right’ where they are accused of being, do they not run into the no less false ‘left’ that has been assigned to the people who are in Latvia two generations or less?

May not the interests of the Latvian people demand an altogether different orientation than the one being pushed on them by Riga, Tallin, Stockholm, not to mention Brussels et al? And what about the pressures from Moscow?

The Destroyer of Forests on the rack.

Incidentally, Latvia has lost about 500,000 inhabitants since it became an independent country. The government’s policy in not encouraging motherhood, is not only a direct cause of suffering to mothers and their children today, but is a guarantee that the number of Latvians, whether right or left, whether one two or more generations in Latvia, will become 1.2 million in the next decade.

The house with the rainbow again.

Caught between the East and the West, must Latvians necessarily lean West? If the terminology keeps insisting in giving the “right” and “left” a traditional economic-sociological meaning, might not the Latvian populists find their own “left”, because at stake is not sociology but the survival of Latvians as a people, a culture?

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