The Republic of Latvia is a parliamentary republic and its general elections usually bring many surprises that define the political landscape for the next four years. The 2022 Parliamentary elections, one might say, sent shockwaves through the country: two new populist parties in, one of the biggest parties out, as well as two junior partners of the coalition out, liberals included.
The election night turned out to be the longest with results still being counted in the evening of the next day, which never happens in Latvia. During that time, Latvian liberals were on an emotional rollercoaster with their results going from over 5% (the threshold) to below and back. It ended on Sunday night with 4.97%, another historical point that will go down in electoral history as they narrowly missed the threshold by just 0.03% losing all 13 seats. Before tackling the “what went wrong” question, let’s have a brief look at the liberals. What we call Latvian liberals is in fact an alliance Attīstībai/Par! that was founded in 2018 by three parties — Latvijas attīstībai (classical liberal party established in 2013), Kustība Par (social liberal party established in 2017) and Izaugsme (a centrist party established in 2013). Three parties made the decision to join forces understanding that Latvia still is quite a conservative society. This alliance resulted in 12.04% for Attīstībai/Par! in the 2018 Parliamentary elections, liberals entered the government as junior coalition partners and became the major reform force of the coalition. Many ask about where the 0.03% go that did not allow the liberals to pass the threshold. But the real question should be where did the 8% go, if keeping in mind 2018 results.
As a minister, one of the liberals’ leaders, Juris Pūce, presented and carried out the administrative reform that had been discussed for ten years and was finally delivered. Liberals maintained the “doers” reputation through active policy proposals, reforms, and tangible results. Despite the real good work and the “doers” reputation, liberals faced three main challenges that when combined led to such dramatic results in 2022: COVID19, scandals and internal mistrust.
Liberals held the Health Ministry and as such, were directly responsible for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, enjoying the benefits of success, later getting all the backlash for government’s decisions and lack thereof. Senior coalition partners, of course, played the blame game that did not go unnoticed.
Strong leaders achieve great results but they are also great targets for dirty PR tricks. A series of scandals and a corruption case smeared the liberals at the end of 2020. Though taking responsibility, resignation, and atonement; political opponents and competitors made sure to use the scandal card two years later.
These and other events led to internal mistrust between the three parties forming the alliance. And though the decision was made to run together for the 2022 general elections, unlike in 2018, it was not a strong alliance, but rather three teams each working on their own.
If the first two challenges were more or less outweighed by strong performance in the government, reforms, resolute stance and active support of Ukraine from the Minister of Defense, who was one of the liberal leaders and quite a popular politician in Latvia at that point, then the problem of internal mistrust was overlooked.
Alliance decided to run together, but divided the regional constituencies, so that each party was responsible for its own constituencies and lists, which pretty much led to different campaigns and schizophrenic messaging.
As a result, in three constituencies that were led by Latvijas attīstībai, all the results were above 5% whereas in the other two, led by Kustība Par, the results were at 3%. Internal mistrust that led to many small wrong decisions that liberals made since the end of 2020 is a powerful aspect that is hard to measure. “There is no such thing as a small detail. Each detail is of vast importance, because one thing leads to another and altogether they amount to loss. I warn our next generation of leaders — pay attention to details, because they matter,” Edgars Jaunups, Latvijas attīstībai’s head of campaign, addressed party members in December 2022. “We may have the best policies, best track record, but elections are about emotions and feelings, less so about ideas, let alone policies. If we don’t create a feeling of a strong and united team, emotionally it is hard to decide to vote for us.”
Liberals decided to run as an alliance, because despite internal mistrust, they thought it would maximize potential results. Sometimes it is better to stand alone, with potentially lesser results, but a real and strong team, which in the long-term means so much more.