The Last Central Committee and Council of Ministers - a petition has been started to abandon the Saeima's motor pool 0 13

The representative of the initiative is Guntars Viziņš. He notes that the Saeima's motor pool regularly becomes the subject of public discussions, raising questions about the appropriateness of spending public funds and the transparency of the use of official transport.

According to the Saeima's regulations, it is a financially independent body, whose accounting, appropriateness of expenditures, legality, and annual reports are audited by the parliamentary commission on public expenditures and audits. This means that actual control and oversight of expenditures are provided by the deputies themselves, including for the expenses related to the maintenance of the motor pool.

"The structural unit of the Saeima's motor pool historically began as the motor pool of the Supreme Council, and even earlier - the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, serving the officials of the Soviet nomenklatura," notes Viziņš.

According to publicly available information, official vehicles of the Saeima are provided to deputies who hold positions in the presidium, head factions or permanent parliamentary commissions. Additionally, vehicles are provided to factions depending on their size.

"Such a practice of using cars creates the risk that official transport is perceived as a positional privilege rather than as a tool for performing specific work tasks and ensuring safety," emphasizes the initiative's representative. In total, the Saeima has about 70 vehicles at its disposal. In his opinion, from the perspective of expenditures from the state budget and public trust, such a practice is neither proportional nor in line with the common practices of parliaments in democratic countries.

According to Viziņš, in order to prevent the inappropriate use of public funds and eliminate any manifestations of corruption - the abuse of official position for personal advantages and benefits - it is necessary to reorganize the Saeima's motor pool, transferring its movable and immovable property to the security and internal affairs agencies, which objectively need transport to perform their duties, such as police officers, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and others.

The author of the initiative notes that the political parties represented in the Saeima are already generously co-financed from the state budget, allowing them to use transport services as needed.