Latvia is preparing to oust the “oligarchs” whose parties for a decade controlled swathes of parliament as voters in the Baltic region’s slowest-growing economy tire of corruption.
Opinion polls show parties affiliated with three oligarchs, who influence policy and secretly control companies, according to former President Valdis Zatlers, will win as few as 14 of the legislature’s 100 seats at a Sept. 17 election, down from 51 five years ago and 30 in 2010.
The vote follows a referendum, called by Zatlers, to dissolve parliament after it failed to lift the immunity of a lawmaker facing a criminal probe. Latvians are increasingly frustrated at corruption after the economy, the European Union’s fastest-growing in 2006, shrank by more than a quarter between 2008 and 2010 leading to a surge in unemployment and wage cuts heightening the debt load of consumers who took mortgages during the country’s economic boom. -Bloomberg