Latvians began voting on Saturday (October 1st) to renew their parliament, in the shadow of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and were preparing, according to analysts, to keep centrist Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins at the head of the government . This result appears probable due to the weakening of the populists, the conservatives and the social-democratic Harmony party (close to the Russian-speaking minority), while the pro-Western party of Krisjanis Karins, New Unity, is leading the polls with about 13% of voting intentions.
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Two days before the election, President Egils Levits had called on the citizens of this Baltic country, a member of the EU and NATO, to go to the polls, while warning them against pro-Kremlin parties close to the large Russian-speaking minority who “hesitated to state clearly who is the aggressor and who is the victim at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine“.
Without naming them, he also criticized in his press release the populist parties which “offer simple and mostly impractical solutions to extraordinarily complex problems, ones that promise to reduce all costs and increase all allocations overnight“, after citing in particular the cost of energy. Polling stations that opened at 7 a.m. local time (4 a.m. GMT) must close at 8 p.m. (5 p.m. GMT). The first exit polls should be published a few minutes later.