100 days of the Siliņa government

As LSM reported at the time, the formation of the new government was very controversial and saw the New Unity party throwing overboard its its two existing coalition partners – the National Alliance and the United List – after just eight months in power.

Instead, New Unity is now teamed up with the Progressives and the Greens and Farmers Union (ZZS) with Siliņa at the helm instead of previous Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš. 

Political scientist Lelde Metla-Rozentāle has given her verdict on the first hundred days of the Siliņa government to LSM's Latvian language service, and in general it is fairly positive, while pointing out several mistakes and room for improvement.

It was predicted that the coalition partners would soon quarrel, because each of them had markedly different ideologies and electorates. However, this has not yet been the case, points out Metla-Rozentāle. 

"Looking back at Siliņa's statement of September 15, when she was still a prime ministerial candidate, that the government would immediately address three most sensitive issues – the increase in electricity and credit payments, undertaking to ratify the Istanbul Convention and the adoption of laws on cohabitation – it can be seen that this has undeniably been accomplished in the 100 days," she writes.

"Silina's government has managed to survive all the critical points without outwardly observable tension between the coalition partners, and the opponents' predictions about the government's quick collapse have proven to be wrong."

However, it wold be wrong to say these 100 days have been plain sailing. Ironically, perhaps the thing closest to a full-blown scandal have been revelations about Siliņa's predecessor.

Revelations about Krišjānis Kariņš' regular journeys by private jet while serving as PM (he is now Foreign Minister) has attracted the heaviest criticism and gained the widest resonance in society. Regardless of whether or not Kariņš travel plans were justified in the context of the Covid years, the government's communication in dealing with the controversy could have been a lot better, writes Lelde Metla-Rozentāle.

"Of course, there will always be some people who will not listen to any explanation and will stick to their beliefs, but there is a much larger part of those who want to understand, but to do that they need information, not very blunt answers from senior officials and initially from politicians," she says.

"This could be a good lesson to take from these 100 days - not only to do, but also to explain both what has already been done and what will be done, because the lack of information promotes myths, half-truths and lies."

Meanwhile the government's own self-asessment report says "Almost all the urgent tasks agreed by the partners forming the government have already been accomplished."

“I am very gratified that the Cabinet of Ministers has accomplished through targeted teamwork the urgent tasks defined by the new government during its first 100 days of office. The state budget for 2024 has also been developed and adopted with three clear priorities –education, health, internal and external security," said Siliņa.

"We will agree on the main tasks to be achieved also next year – this way the society will be much better able to follow whether the government is working successfully and whether we deliver on our promises. One of the major challenges we have started to address is to reduce bureaucracy and administrative burden for our entrepreneurs in order to promote Latvia’s competitiveness. The drafting of the government action plan has also entered the final phase – my intention was to set out much clearer objectives to be achieved than in previous plans. We have had a very successful first work period, but it’s just the beginning – I and the team of ministers pursue work to fulfil our promises of promoting Latvia’s prosperity, security and unified society,” said Siliņa.