At the beginning of the week, a meeting of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, which was considering proposals for the denunciation of the Istanbul Convention, took place simultaneously with a meeting of the Budget Committee, which had the state budget project for the next year on its agenda, writes Latvijas Avīze.
"There were four TV cameras at the Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, but only one at the Budget Committee," noted with regret the head of the Union of Greens and Farmers (UGF) faction, Harijs Rokpelnis. As a member of the Budget Committee, he would like the budget to remain a priority for politicians, and for society to notice what the UGF has achieved, such as preserving more than 30 rural schools that will be able to continue operating.
However, discussions about the Istanbul Convention have now taken center stage in the political agenda. The process that the UGF initiated to remind voters of its commitment to conservative values has spiraled out of control. By supporting the proposal of the opposition party "Latvia First" to withdraw from the convention, which was ratified at the end of 2023, the UGF may not have realized the scale of the disagreements that would ensue.
It is unofficially known that the coalition attempted to discuss ways to resolve the situation; however, for the "Progressives," this conflict turned out to be an unexpected opportunity to remind voters of their values, so they allowed events to unfold on their own.
The Foreign Affairs Committee completed the preparation of the bill for the final reading on Wednesday, rejecting proposals from the "Progressives" and "New Unity" aimed at delaying the withdrawal from the convention, and the Saeima may consider this issue as early as Thursday. However, even if the partners manage to smooth over the current conflict, the parties' positions diverge on other issues as well, such as the decision to nominate former chairman Janis Siksnis for the position of member of the Council of Public Electronic Media.
Meanwhile, Minister of Transport Aitis Švinkas ("Progressives") refuses to bring the issue of writing off the debts of the Ventspils Port Authority amounting to 14.8 million euros, which is being promoted by the UGF, to the table. Švinkas attributes the port's backlog to the legacy of past decades, when "the infrastructure of Ventspils was maintained at the expense of port funds, EU funds, and with state support."
