Phoenix68
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- Mar 12, 2022
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"....the Progressives, a social-democratic green party, passed the five-percent electoral threshold for the first time and scooped up 10 parliamentary seats. For the Beet, Deep Baltic editor Will Mawhood recounts how the Progressives’ slow but steady rise has shaken up Latvia’s long-standing political divisions.
“We are polar bears and the Progressives are penguins — in the wild their paths essentially don’t cross,” Rihards Kols, a parliamentarian from the National Alliance party told Latvian television the morning after the country’s parliamentary elections last October. Seemingly pleased with his party’s fourth-place showing and his zoological metaphor (repeated from the night before), Kols was setting out a series of “red lines.” Namely, the political forces with which the nationalist party would refuse to form a governing coalition. In addition to the anti-sanctions party For Stability! and two groupings backed by oligarchs with questionable business and political ties, Kols listed newcomers the Progressives (Progresīvie, in Latvian).
“We are polar bears and the Progressives are penguins — in the wild their paths essentially don’t cross,” Rihards Kols, a parliamentarian from the National Alliance party told Latvian television the morning after the country’s parliamentary elections last October. Seemingly pleased with his party’s fourth-place showing and his zoological metaphor (repeated from the night before), Kols was setting out a series of “red lines.” Namely, the political forces with which the nationalist party would refuse to form a governing coalition. In addition to the anti-sanctions party For Stability! and two groupings backed by oligarchs with questionable business and political ties, Kols listed newcomers the Progressives (Progresīvie, in Latvian).