Didzis Šmits is interviewed by Māris Liopa, director of the Latvian forestry and related industries portal zemeunvalsts.lv, and Pauls Rēvelis, editor of zemeunvalsts.lv.
With October and the Saeima elections approaching, all sorts of activity has been visible in the public arena for quite some time now, most of which, unfortunately, amounts to assessments and criticism of everyday affairs rather than to new and interesting ideas.
The initiative to change the electoral system, with a view to broadening the voter's range of choice, comes as something of an unexpected surprise. This conversation, which took place at the end of 2025 while the Saeima was still debating the state budget, is about that, and also about geopolitics and Latvia's place in it.
How would you characterise 2025, and not only as someone who has been active in politics for a good while and continues to be so?
The first question, and straight away such a broad topic. I would like to answer by paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut slightly: 2025 is the time when the muck was still only approaching the fan, but the movement — closer and closer — is plain to see.
I am very worried by the situation in Ukraine and around it. The activity of recent months can of course be assessed in various ways, but to my mind it shows a desire on the part of the USA to change the situation. It may of course fail, but at least there is some sort of movement. At the same time it is perfectly clear that if a solution is found in Ukraine, it will include us as well. If a peace or truce of that kind is concluded, it also involves conduct or positions that have to be assessed more broadly — one thing is how we conclude peace in wartime, another is what life will be like after the war. Will we have an iron curtain on our eastern border, a "border between the two Koreas", or business as usual. These possible variants are very different indeed.
If we have to raise an iron curtain and tear up the railway tracks, that is nothing to grieve over, but it does require a substantial reordering of the country's life and an understanding, for example, that the ports will turn into industrial areas with berths from which something can be exported or which can be used for military purposes. Liepāja's Karosta, for example, would in that case be restored for military needs. As I said, a decision of that kind is not to be seen as a tragedy, but the country's life will have to be reordered around it. If we recall, in its day West Berlin was surrounded by a wall, yet people there did not live badly.
What else worries me? At the very moment when a decision about an iron curtain and tearing up the tracks might be taken, we have a political leadership whose representatives do not understand that the division of spheres of influence is already under way in the world. Latvia's representatives should not be "planning to go at some point" — they should already be at every negotiating table, whether it is in the USA or elsewhere, and should be acting so that the situation in future, in terms of security, the economy and other considerations, is as advantageous and favourable to us as possible!!!! And what do we see? Our people still do not understand what is going on, and I do not know whether there is any reason to hope that the national interest could be clearly defined. At the moment I am reading the historian Aivars Stranga's book "Latvia. The Time of Fateful Decisions. Occupation. 1939–1940", which allows a comparison — at that time nobody in Latvia believed that the secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact existed; never mind that the Americans and the French sent the text to the authorities of the day... our people did not believe it.
The political level at which we operated and lived in 2025 can be summed up briefly — "Trump is bad" versus "Trump is good". As shallow as that. The point is not to discuss the US president but to get through to him. In a way it is perhaps just as well that we are not getting through to him at present, because Latvia's representatives have neither anything to say nor anything to offer.
Speaking of the political situation in Latvia, on the one hand I think the present government ought to live out its "official" term and get what it deserves at the elections, but... there will certainly be a great many events before next November, when the new Saeima convenes, and a new world order may be established before there are political changes in Latvia.
I will repeat myself: either we do not understand this situation in the world, or, if we do understand it, there is no clearly visible willingness or ability to act in Latvia's best interests.
In short, what worries me is that somewhere beyond Latvia's borders a new world order is unmistakably being drawn up in which we are objects, not subjects. We can assess the current government in various ways, but its stance in this situation shows others in the world quite clearly — "this is the level of our abilities in wartime, this is the best we have been able to do in wartime". If that is what you show the rest of the world, others start to ask questions — what can you want and demand, is it worth talking to you at all, and so on.
Our conversation is taking place while the 2026 state budget is being adopted. What am I to say when the prime minister thinks the budget is excellent and the only problem is that we are borrowing too much? By way of comparison: everyone in the family is delighted with their Christmas presents, everyone is touched... never mind that yet another payday loan was taken out to buy them. What is there to complain about, so long as there are presents?
For comparison, a historical parallel with the fall of Constantinople. While the Ottoman army was already breaking into the city, the Byzantine nobility were taking part in a conference debating what sex angels are. ... All of this has happened before. Four years after the start of the war, the European Commission is proud of its achievements in climate neutrality and of the fact that the caps of plastic bottles can no longer be unscrewed completely. There is serious discussion about whether investment in defence ought to be climate-neutral. It is one thing for European officials to do this, quite another for Latvian politicians to ape them.
How, in your view, should it be? What should be done?
I remember that at the start of the Lehman Brother crisis (2009–2010) the prime minister of the day, Ivars Godmanis, called in representatives of the various industries to ask how badly the crisis might affect us and what could be forecast. That, it seems, was the last time a conversation of that kind took place under the prime minister's leadership.
In my view, what is needed is a government sitting, or several, to consider how best to use the resources available to us. For example, 53% of Latvia is covered by forest — what should be done to multiply the benefit we get from it? A similar question applies to peat. Incidentally, on the question of forests it would not even be necessary to hear out the businesspeople; a brief explanation from the director of the forest research institute Silava about tree diameters, formulas and what needs to be done so that we fell trees before rot sets into them would be enough. Quite some time ago, talking to a Swedish forester, he mentioned that Latvia's population relative to the volume of wood in Latvia's forests is such that all its inhabitants and the state itself would become wealthy from the forest alone, never mind other resources.
It is a sad fact that Brussels has not abandoned the green course throughout the war years. At present there is supposedly the beginning of a retreat, and the most insane ideas are being halted, but if all the green course money were given to Ukraine, we would undoubtedly be seeing peace talks of a completely different nature. Brussels is of course Brussels, but similar behaviour can be observed in Latvia too; here the green course questions have not been reviewed or set aside.
That is the goal and the agenda of particular people, particular politicians.
In my view, instead of selling peat to the Netherlands, for instance, we ought to be getting the flower growers from there to work in Latvia. It is slowly changing; we are hearing a louder voice from the science that is not paid for with climate money. I think this madness will end one day and many will remember it as a great nightmare. The green course is already being corrected, and I am waiting for the time when many will "suddenly" discover that they had known perfectly well all along that the process was flawed, but...
Seeing how critical your attitude is, what makes you carry on in politics?
In my view, if a strong prime minister comes to power in Latvia, forms a strong government and a president with firm positions is chosen, the "train of state" can quickly be put back on the rails. There really are not that many important decisions to take; we have not managed (and this is a good thing) to land ourselves in problems as big as others have. In Latvia it is possible to achieve reasonably quickly what the Swede I quoted earlier described — using our own resources correctly and sensibly to become wealthy. What public administration needs is common sense. Cabinet sittings should be looking at what can be done in the forests, the peat bogs, the countryside and so on. We do not only have natural resources. We have Rīga, historically the largest metropolis in the Baltic region. There are excellent opportunities to turn Rīga into a student city, as Prague, incidentally, has done, having turned itself into a city of branch campuses of foreign universities. My daughter wanted to study in England, where everything is very expensive; looking at the options, we found a branch of the relevant university in Prague where the costs are almost three times lower. A splendid opportunity for Latvia!
You have joined a group of socially and politically active people who are seriously considering a change to the electoral system.
Our group of like-minded people has been working on this question for about six months. The current electoral procedure was written into law in 1995. We cannot say there has been no change — 76 new members were elected at the recent Saeima elections. There have been Saeimas in which we elected a whole string of new parties. The result, though, has not been what was hoped for; as I said at the start of the conversation, "the problems are approaching the fan".
I was once a supporter of the majoritarian electoral system, a fan of it even. In our group we began to talk about this and think it through, and we also brought in someone with expert knowledge of electoral systems. Discussing a mixed electoral system raised the question of how we are to understand the words in the Constitution that "the elections shall be proportional", and whether electing some members from party lists and some by direct election is compatible with the word "proportional" or not.
If arguments were to start about amending the Constitution, there would be no point in pursuing a contentious provision, because its approval would drag on and turn into a long-drawn-out legal nightmare; and if you want to amend the Constitution in relation to elections, that is a practical impossibility, because it requires the support of two thirds of the members and must in addition be confirmed by a referendum, for which a maximum threshold is set. There has been one such referendum in Latvia's history (the language referendum), and 52% of voters took part in it. Clearly, the number taking part in a vote on amendments to the electoral system would be lower.
The scope for change therefore had to be sought within the existing Constitution, assessing what, within the framework of a proportional electoral system, might change the outcome of the game (the elections). Once we looked into the so-called Irish model, our doubts vanished, because the Irish constitution too prescribes a proportional electoral system, just as ours does, and it has been in force and working splendidly for a century.
What is the difference? In Latvia a person walks into a polling station and receives a little pile of ballot papers, from which they have to choose one list drawn up by one party. In the Irish version, parties and/or individual candidates register with the Central Election Commission, the country is divided into a set number of constituencies, and in each constituency all the candidates are combined onto a single ballot paper. The ballot paper is valid if the voter marks at least one candidate — that is, the voter compiles their own list. An important nuance of this kind of choice is that parties will be forced to put forward strong personalities and not get carried away with the number of candidates. Parties will have to consolidate both internally and among themselves. There are quite enough positive possibilities here. I do not think changes of this kind would change anything by tomorrow, but they would certainly open the way to change in the near future.
I would guess that under such a system many parties would have a single seat in the Saeima — the one won by the party's figurehead.
Why have we turned our attention to changing the rules (the electoral system)? I like comparisons. I suspect many people are unaware that in the 1950s basketball in the United States was effectively finished. Why? Spectators stopped coming to the games; NBA games were being played to empty stands. The reason? The rules of the game at the time included no shot clock. A team that gained the lead would often simply pass the ball among themselves, giving the opposition no chance. I have read about an NBA game with six overtimes in which exactly one shot at the basket was taken in each overtime. With rules and attitudes like that the game was effectively degraded. The NBA's leadership assessed what the optimal attacking time would be and eventually settled on 24 seconds (in Europe it was 30 seconds for a while). The game became enjoyable and the spectators came back.
Changing the rules does not, of course, always guarantee a result, but the possibility is there. In Latvia we need to revive interest in politics, interest in taking part in elections, both by voting and by standing. That is the main offer. We reckon that from the moment the proposal I have described begins its journey through the Saeima, it could take one to two years. There will clearly be a great deal to do. We probably need to be thinking about the best candidates for prime minister and president, and so on.
For reasons hard to fathom, Latvia's presidents choose to take on only a ceremonial function, or that of handing out "praise on behalf of the state" — with the exception of Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, whose superb command of languages gave her an advantage in operating internationally.
And how is it now... The president nominates the prime minister but cannot recall them or take responsibility for the choice. How responsible is that?
In our group we have also talked about a popularly elected president, and it seems the time for that has come. It has to be stressed that a popularly elected president would not need any increase in the scope of their functions or duties. In my view, such a president would nominate a prime minister, who would be confirmed by the Saeima on their own. The prime minister would then form the government themselves, approving it together with the president.
If we are talking about the future, my main criterion — my zero criterion, so to speak — for the 15th Saeima is that there should be no backing out (no "stitch-up") over the change to the electoral system. On other questions opinions may differ, but this question is the foundation of foundations; the promise given to people must be kept. We will of course also hear a great deal of untrue criticism about this, but if you cannot listen to that, there is nothing for you to do in politics.
Much the same as in a large company...
Public administration reform can be carried out very simply — cut funding substantially, and in return give money and freedom. We have heard a great deal about the Estonian revenue service, whose head, the head's salary and the budget are approved by the Estonian government. That is all.
Here we often have a person who is very well suited to the post, and yet someone will still find something to nitpick about, something to object to.
If you cannot get past that, you will not get anywhere!
The national question, loyalty and immigration. How should we act?
If chaos takes hold in one part of a system, it effectively takes hold throughout the system. As for immigration, it is clear that we will need people who work, but there is nothing that has to be invented from scratch. How do others handle it — Sweden and Denmark, for example? The Swedes have let the situation drift and have created very serious problems for themselves. The Danes exercise strict control over who comes into their country. I see the situation like this — 200 to 300 people come to Latvia for a fixed period to work at some large company, that workforce rotates, and it happens under control. If everything is done sensibly, I see no problems.
For example, for people from Asian countries the clan and caste system matters — if one person goes to Europe to study, five come with them to keep the student supported (the so-called supporting team). Those five have no serious grounds for being here.
As for the recent developments around migration, Latvia is not so large a country that anyone can pretend not to know who is coming in, how many, for how long and why. Control is not and cannot be complicated.
When I was doing my master's degree in France, I was granted a student visa and it was perfectly clear what I was allowed to do with it, for how long, and what I was not.
Over the years we have heard the stories about other countries' splendid experience, supposedly ready to be adopted or adapted without reservation, hundreds of times. Take it! Use it! Nobody takes it and nobody uses it. In 2017, for example, the Forest Certification Council of Latvia submitted to VARAM material it had translated itself about Finnish experience with restrictions on economic activity and compensation. Nothing happened and nothing is happening. For just as long, it seems, the Finnish and Estonian education systems have been praised, ministry people go on study visits and... nothing.
As for schools, the reproaches are not to be addressed solely to the Ministry of Education and Science, but also to the relevant sector's trade union, if we are talking about secondary education. I will agree that a great deal has been heard and said about the Finnish education model, and proposals to introduce it (to adopt or adapt it) have been voiced more than once, but... there is one very substantial matter that neither the ministry nor the trade union wants to hear about.
During the 13th Saeima I was on a visit of several days to Finland as a member. At their ministry responsible for education we talked about the Finnish secondary education model. I asked about the approximate salary of a teacher. The Finnish representative promised to find out and went off to a computer, where she spent about 30 minutes. In reply we heard approximate figures — around 4500 to 5000 euros, depending on the region of the country. The ministry official explained why she had spent so long at the computer — the Finnish education ministry has nothing whatever to do with teachers' salaries; schools are opened and maintained by local authorities, and teachers' salaries are set in a collective agreement between the local authorities and the trade unions.
When I talked about this in Latvia, the trade union representatives did not want to hear a word of it. Fine, don't listen — but then don't talk about the Finnish model! On this score I have come to a conclusion: the moment our education sector's trade union loses "the bad state that won't hand over the money", it will lose the justification for a great deal else as well...
Over the years the Finns have consolidated a system in which all schools are equivalent in terms of the education and knowledge received — assess a school in Helsinki, in Tampere and far in the north, and they will not differ greatly.
I will repeat myself, but in my view the failure to introduce the Finnish model depends precisely on the reason given above. Incidentally, in this situation an important question at local elections would certainly be — as head of the local authority, have you got the best teachers into your municipality's schools and secured the highest quality of education? I would suggest that towns with the best schools would be able to attract more residents.
I like a thought I read recently — for some reason we have formed the idea that when we talk about a school there must necessarily be a building. In truth, what has mattered in every age is that a teacher reaches the young person; up to year six there can even be just one teacher. Distances vary.
Coming back to the Saeima and the work to be done, the impression that forms is not a very good one. Members of the previous Saeima mentioned more than once that the coalition had reached agreement on the administrative and territorial reform (there were no other broader agreements). In the current Saeima the coalition agreed to elect a president, to pass the civil partnership law and to ratify the Istanbul Convention. That is all. Is there no other work, and nothing more to be done that could be agreed on?
Our main offer to the 15th Saeima, as I said, is a change to the electoral system, which will also take time technically. It should be added that if we were suddenly lucky and the system were changed more quickly, it would not be right for a Saeima elected under the old procedure to carry on working for any length of time, and extraordinary elections would have to be called. Clearly this is only one of the scenarios. We are not constructing some vast ideology, because the bearers of an ideology and the changers of a system are usually not the same people. At new elections, let the ideologies fight it out; whichever wins, wins. Politics will always be a struggle over views. What matters to me is that people who are prepared to choose the most sensible president and prime minister get into the Saeima.
As for the so-called Istanbul Convention, it is worth remembering that it is the consequences of international agreements that tend to be dangerous. In the interwar period, for example, there was the Kellogg–Briand Pact, an interstate treaty under which the parties renounced war as an instrument of national policy and undertook to settle all conflicts solely by peaceful means. That pact, incidentally, made no provision for what to do if someone did start a war. When Germany began to rearm and money had to be found for the French and British armies, serious resistance arose, because... "we have only just (in 1928) signed a document saying there would be no war". As a result, for almost six years nobody prepared for war. They saw what was happening, but... In effect the Kellogg–Briand Pact did not prohibit war; it created the conditions for a large, protracted and devastating one.
How do you assess the recent discussions and arguments about media independence? Is it enough for media representatives to declare publicly that they are independent, full stop, and for us to be happy to believe it?
My view of the media is a different one. From what I have heard, many people consider Latvijas Radio or Latvijas Televīzija — the public media — to be the mouthpiece of "Vienotība"; I take the view that "Vienotība" has no ideology, and that the ideology is shaped and created by journalists, who are more capable of doing it. "Vienotība" merely repeats what the journalists say.
The task of a public medium is to ensure a diversity of opinion and argument between different ideas, in accordance with fair and comprehensible rules of the game. Leaving aside Jānis Domburs on Latvijas Televīzija, this function is objectively performed better by the commercial channel TV24 (Preses klubs and Armands Puče), which invites a range of people to speak and works to ensure a diversity of views.