For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK

For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK
Leader	Roberts Zīle
Founded	TB: 1 February 1993[1] TB/LNNK: 21 June 1997
Dissolved	23 July 2011
Merged into	National Alliance
Headquarters	Riga
Ideology	Latvian nationalism[2][3] National conservatism[4] Economic liberalism[5] Euroscepticism
Political position	Right-wing
International affiliation	None
European affiliation	Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists
European Parliament Group	European Conservatives and Reformists
Official colours	Maroon, white, and gold
Saeima	2 / 100
European Parliament	1 / 8
Website
http://www.tb.lv
Politics of Latvia Political parties Elections

For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK (Latvian: Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK), abbreviated to TB/LNNK, was a free market national conservative political party in Latvia. It has two members in Latvia's parliament, the Saeima, and belongs to the National Alliance, which has eight seats.

The party was founded from smaller groups in 1993 as 'For Fatherland and Freedom' (TB), focusing on promoting the Latvian language and putting a cap on naturalisation.^[6] It won six Saeima seats in its first year, and 14 in 1995, when it entered the governing centre-right coalition. It merged with the moderate Latvian National Independence Movement (LNNK) in 1997, and moved its emphasis to economic liberalisation. TB/LNNK's then-leader, Guntars Krasts, was Prime Minister from 1997 to 1998. It remained in government until 2004, and again since 2006.

Initially from the nationalist right, the party has become more moderate since the 1997 merger. It has also shifted from supporting economic interventionism to the free market.^[7][8] A predominantly ethnic Latvian party,^[9] the party's support base is university-educated,^[10] middle class,^[11] and concentrated in Riga.^[12] The party is soft eurosceptic,^[13] and is a member of the anti-federalist Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists. Its one MEP, party leader Roberts Zīle, sits with the ECR group in the European Parliament. It has caused controversy with its commemoration of Latvian Legion Day.

For the 2010 parliamentary election, the party formed an alliance with far right nationalist All For Latvia!. In July 2011, both parties merged into a unitary party, bearing the name National Alliance.

History

Foundation

The roots of the party are in the 'Third Awakening' of the Latvian independence movement in the late 1980s.^[14] It identified with the radical part of the movement,^{[citation needed]} which insisted on full independence for Latvia and the legal continuity with the Republic of Latvia that existed until 1940, when it was annexed by Soviet Union.^[14] Both of those ideas were later adopted by the mainstream independence movement.^{[citation needed]}

It closely affiliated to the Citizens' Congress, by which an alternative government was created that claimed lineage to the interwar government.^[15] In this structure, parties developed, which continued after independence in 1991. Two of the parties, the '18th November Union' and 'Fatherland',^[14] merged in 1993 to form the centre-right 'For Fatherland and Freedom' (Latvian: Tēvzemei un Brīvībai or TB).^[16] The new party took its name from the inscription on the Freedom Monument, and its focus was on undoing the effects of the Soviet occupation,^[14][15] especially promoting the Latvian language and tightening citizenship laws. The party took part in the 1993 election to the Saeima, and won six seats. A party with a similar background, the Latvian National Independence Movement (LNNK), won fifteen seats.

Merger and referenda

TB was the leading force behind two referendum proposals (in 1994 and 1998) to make Latvian citizenship laws stricter. In 1994, the proposition did not gather the necessary number of voter signatures.^{[citation needed]} Before the 1995 election, the TB signed a prospective coalition agreement, the centre-right 'National Bloc', with the LNNK and the Latvian Farmers' Union,^[17] and presented a more rounded programme, based on the LNNK's,^[18] although still concentrating on national identity issues.^[14] The party jumped to fourteen seats, becoming one of the four major parties in the Saeima, and leap-frogging the LNNK (which suffered a split from the secession of the populist right under Joachim Siegerist)^[19] as the main right-wing party.^[16] The party fell just short of a majority, with leader Māris Grīnblats's right-wing coalition securing the support of 49 out of 100 deputies for the premiership.^[20] Instead, a broad centre-right coalition was formed with the TB controlling four ministries under PM Andris Šķēle.^[21]

In 1997, the TB merged with the LNNK to form 'For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK', also known as the 'Conservative Union'. In 1998, the proposal was defeated in a referendum, by a relatively small margin (45% of voters supporting the change and 52% rejecting it). At the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, the party shifted its focus to economic issues, as the language and citizenship issues were largely resolved.^{[citation needed]}

Government

Roberts Zīle, the party's current leader, served in the government from 1997 to 2004, and was TB/LNNK's candidate for Prime Minister in 2006 and 2010.

Tēvzemei un Brīvībai was a part of coalition governments from December 1995 to February 2004. From 1997 to 1998, its representative, Guntars Krasts, was the prime minister. From February 2004 until November 2006, the party was in opposition. Although it only gained 8 seats in the 2006 elections, the party was invited to become part of the ruling coalition, and it agreed to join.^[22]

Tēvzemei un Brīvībai campaigned as a strong supporter of Latvia's national interests and opponent of a federal Europe. Tēvzemei un Brīvībai won 29% of vote and 4 of Latvia's 9 seats in the 2004 European Parliament election. In the 2009 European election, the party lost most of its support, falling from nearly 30% to 7.5%, resulting in the loss of 3 of its 4 European seats.^[23]

The party attempted to join the centre-right Unity electoral alliance in 2010, but was rejected. This forced it to join with the more nationalist All For Latvia! (VL) in the National Alliance (Nacionālā Apvienība). In the 2010 elections, the Alliance won eight seats, with VL winning six of them and TB/LNNK reduced to two.

In July 2011, both components of the National Alliance agreed to intensify their links and to re-organize the National Alliance as a unitary party under the same name.^[24] On TB/LNNK's 17th and last delegate conference, 84 of 90 party representatives agreed with the merger, 3 defeated and 3 abstained.^[25]

Ideology

Constitutionally, the party treats the post-1991 Republic of Latvia not as a successor to the inter-war republic, but as a continuation,^[26] and considers all acts of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic as illegitimate.^[14] The party opposed the naturalisation of the large population of non-citizens (Latvian: nepilsoņi) that live in Latvia. The party's stance towards the Soviet era lead Guntars Krasts's government to make Latvian Legion Day a public holiday, and its members to celebrate the Latvian Legion, which fought against the USSR and alongside Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

The party is an advocate of the free market.^[5] The party's position has shifted over time from interventionism to liberalisation. Originally, the party based its statism on the heavy interventionism in the inter-war republic.^[27] Of TB/LNNK's predecessors, For Fatherland and Freedom was more sceptical of the free market, while the LNNK supported full privatisation, within the context of a welfare state and protectionism.^[28] After the merger, the party adopted free market economics as one of its main emphases,^[8] advocating a swift transition to a market economy.^[7]

The party holds an anti-federal, soft eurosceptic position.^[13] It was the only party to have flirted with opposing membership of the European Union before Latvian accession.^[29] In March 2003, it changed to supporting membership,^[30] fearing that voting no would cause the country to lose support for economic reforms and security policy.^[31] The party campaigned in favour of accession in the November 2003 referendum.^[29]

The party is a strong advocate for the Latvian language. For example, it introduced a law mandating the public sector to ignore communication in any other language.^[32]

Political support

A major cleavage in Latvian politics is between ethnic Latvians, from whom TB/LNNK receives almost all of its votes, and ethnic Russians. In the 1998 election, ethnic Latvians were fifteen times as likely to vote for the party as ethnic Russians.^[9] The 1998 referendum on citizenship sponsored by TB/LNNK was supported by a majority of Latvians, but defeated overall by ethnic Russians.^[33]

The party is supported mostly by the middle classes,^[11] with wealthier voters tending to vote either for TB/LNNK or Latvian Way.^[34] Before the parties merged in 1997, both TB and the LNNK received the most support from university graduates.^[10]

Riga has traditionally been by far the party's strongest area, with 40% of its voters in 1995 coming from the capital city.^[12] However, Riga's politics are shifting from a ethno-linguistic cleavage to a socio-economic one, leading to a softening of this disparity in the 2001 local elections.^[18]

Unlike most parties in Latvia, TB/LNNK has never based its support on having a particularly popular leader.^[35]

International relations and criticism

The party is a member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR), allying with, amongst others, the British Conservative Party, Polish Law and Justice, and the Czech Civic Democratic Party. They sit with the AECR's group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, in the European Parliament. Until 2009, TB/LNNK was a member of the Alliance for Europe of the Nations and sat with the UEN group.

In 2009, British foreign secretary David Miliband has criticized Conservative Chairman Eric Pickles' decision to secure an alliance with TB/LNNK in the ECR group "despite the fact that its members attend commemorations for the Waffen-SS".^[36] In a response, William Hague demanded apology to TB/LNNK and Latvian government from Miliband, describing his remarks as recycling "false Soviet propaganda" and noting that "the majority of parties forming Latvia’s current Government including the Prime Minister’s party, have attended the commemoration of Latvians who fought in the Second World War".^[37]

The Israeli historian and Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israeli office in Jerusalem, criticized the party's "obsession to pay public homage to the Latvian-SS Legion in contradiction to all historical logic and sensitivity to Nazi crimes" in a column for The Guardian on September 28, 2009,^[38] while Vilnius University professor Dovid Katz, writing that the British Conservatives must not be let "get off the hook for their dalliances with some of the worst racists and Holocaust perverters in eastern Europe," called for Pickles' resignation as chairman in October 2009.^[39]

Electoral performance

Electoral performance of TB/LNNK in the Saeima. TB/LNNK is in gold, as is its predecessor For Fatherland and Freedom. The performance of LNNK is in red (1993 and 1995) and that of VL in maroon (2010).

Leaders

Party chairmen

• Māris Grīnblats (1997–2002)
• Jānis Straume (2002–2006)
• Roberts Zīle (2006 – present day)

Saeima faction presidents

• Jānis Straume (1997–2002)
• Māris Grīnblats (2002–2010)

Footnotes

1. ^ (Latvian) Blūzma, Valdis (1998). Latvijas valsts atjaunošana, 1986.-1993. LU žurnāla "Latvijas Vēsture" fonds. pp. 368. ISBN 9789984643007. 
2. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=Sa1zlvaYmnwC&pg=PA69&dq=latvia+for+fatherland+and+freedom+nationalist#PPA69,M1
3. ^ http://www.parties-and-elections.de/latvia.html
4. ^ Ramet, Sabrina P. (2010), Central and Southeast European Politics Since 1989, Cambridge University Press, p. 79, http://books.google.de/books?id=oFXdiS25N78C&pg=PA79&dq=for+fatherland+and+freedom+national+conservative&hl=de&ei=Sz7FTqnPHIqLswbZyKHICw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=for%20fatherland%20and%20freedom%20national%20conservative&f=false, retrieved 17 November 2011 
5. ^ ^{a b} "European election: Latvia". BBC News. 13 June 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/vote2004/euro/html/14.stm. 
6. ^ Nørgaard, Ole (1999). The Baltic States After Independence. Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 84–85. ISBN 9781858988375. 
7. ^ ^{a b} Jungerstam-Mulders, Susanne (2006). Post-Communist EU Member States: Parties and Party Systems. London: Ashgate Publishing. p. 57. ISBN 9780754647126. 
8. ^ ^{a b} Novikova, Irina; Kamburov, Dimitŭr (2003). Men in the Global World: Integrating Postsocialist Perspectives. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute. p. 204. 
9. ^ ^{a b} Smith-Silvertsen (2004), p. 108
10. ^ ^{a b} Smith-Silvertsen (2004), p. 114
11. ^ ^{a b} Smith-Silvertsen (2004), p. 98
12. ^ ^{a b} Smith-Silvertsen (2004), p. 110
13. ^ ^{a b} Berglund, Sten (2006). The Making of the European Union: Foundations, Institutions and Future Trends. London: Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 151. ISBN 9781845420253. 
14. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Dawisha et al (1997), p. 272
15. ^ ^{a b} Bugajski, Janusz (2002). Political Parties of Eastern Europe. New York: M.E. Sharpe. p. 114. ISBN 9781563246760. 
16. ^ ^{a b} Dawisha et al (1997), p. 281
17. ^ Dawisha et al (1997), p. 281–2
18. ^ ^{a b} Berglund (2004), p. 117
19. ^ Nørgaard, Ole (1999). The Baltic States After Independence. London: Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 81. ISBN 9781858988375. 
20. ^ Dawisha et al (1997), p. 282
21. ^ Dawisha et al (1997), p. 283
22. ^ http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/16758/
23. ^ Latvian Central Election Commission
24. ^ http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/29032/
25. ^ TB/LNNK 17. kongresa lēmums par Apvienības reorganizāciju (17th TB/LNNK congress decides to re-organize alliance), in Latvian
26. ^ Smith-Silvertsen (2004), p. 72
27. ^ Eglitis (2002), p. 103
28. ^ Eglitis (2002), p. 69
29. ^ ^{a b} Szczerbiak et al (2005), p. 205
30. ^ Anglo, Sydney (2005). Machiavelli - The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 130. ISBN 9780199267767. 
31. ^ Szczerbiak et al (2005), p. 163
32. ^ Rutland, Peter (2000). Annual Survey of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Holding the Course. London: M.E. Sharpe. p. 141. ISBN 9780765603609. 
33. ^ Clemens, Walter C. (2001). The Baltic Transformed: Complexity Theory and European Security. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 123. ISBN 9780847698592. 
34. ^ Smith-Silvertsen (2004), p. 113
35. ^ Ramet, Sabrina P. (2010). Central and Southeast European Politics Since 1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 456. ISBN 9780521716161. 
36. ^ David Miliband's speech showed rare passion – this was powerful stuff, The Guardian
37. ^ William Hague demands an apology from Miliband after “disgraceful smears.”
38. ^ Zuroff, Efraim. "The Nazi Whitewash". The Guardian. 28 September 2009. Retrieved 6 November 2009.
39. ^ Katz, Dovid. "Cameron Must End Tories' Far-Right Fling". Irish Times. 31 October 2009. Retrieved 7 November 2009.

References

• Smith-Silvertsen, Hermann (2004). "Latvia". In Berglund, Sten; Ekman, Joakim; Aarebrot, Frank H.. The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 9781840648546. 
• Dawisha, Karen; Parrott, Bruce (1997). The Consolidation of Democracy in East-Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521599382. 
• Eglitis, Daina Stukuls (2002). Imagining the Nation: History, Modernity, and Revolution in Latvia. Philadelphia: Penn State Press. ISBN 9780271022031. 
• Szczerbiak, Aleks; Taggart, Paul A. (2005). EU Enlargement and Referendums. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415360074. 

External links

• Official website