Government shrugs off Saeima refugee snub

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Latvia's chaotic efforts to compile a policy for dealing with an influx of refugees took another twist Friday when a parliamentary committee failed to back the position adopted by the government Thursday night.

A walkout by four MPs left the European Affairs Committee without a quorum and left journalists and politicians alike scratching their heads to determine whether that meant the government still had a policy or not.

After a brief recess, Committee chair Lolita Cigane returned to announce that the government's provisional acceptance of refugees would remain in force despite the Committee's failure to endorse it.

Deputies were also reportedly astonished to learn that Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis had taken leave Friday.

Beyond the farcical nature of proceedings in recent days which has seen the deadline for the government to get a plan together repeatedly changed, which has seen President Raimonds Vejonis issuing a decree demanding swifter action and which saw a stormy cabinet sitting on Thursday cobbling together a position, the internal divisions of both opposition and ruling parties have been cruelly exposed.

The four Friday walkouts came from two Greens and Farmers Alliance (ZZS) MPs, one from the National Alliance (NA), which are both government parties, and one from the opposition Harmony party.

At the cabinet sitting on Thursday, one ZZS minister and two NA ministers voted against the government's refugee policy while ministers from the Unity party and other ZZS ministers backed it.

Yet at almost the same time, Unity's three MEPs abstained from a vote on the EU's refugee distribution proposals at the European parliament while ZZS and NA MEPs voted against.

Harmony's MEP voted for the EU proposals.

As a result the National Alliance is the only party able to claim a consistent position on the issue - a position of total opposition to accepting more than the 250 refugees originally agreed.

Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis is due to present Latvia's position at an EU-level meeting on September 22 - provided no-one finds some hitherto undiscovered constitutional reason why he cannot do so...  

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