K.S., Eastern Approaches, Economist.com Ahead of Latvia's recent general election many analysts (including this blog) expected Saskaņas centrs (Harmony Centre), a party backed by most of the country's ethnic Russians, to win most seats. In the end the ruling coalition defied expectations and was returned to government. Russian media have often expressed concern over the plight of their ethnic bredren in Latvia, suggesting they are the victims of deep (and state-backed) prejudice. So how did they react to the election result?
There was much mourning of the decline of Par cilvēka tiesībām vienotā Latvijā (For Human Rights in United Latvia; this and most subsequent links in Latvian or Russian), a much more radical pro-Russian party than Harmony Centre that tanked at the polls. Vesti, a news portal, declared that Latvia's Russians were no longer represented in parliament, and reminded its readers that nearly 365,000 of Latvia’s inhabitants, most of them Russians, do not have the vote as they are non-citizens. Another big news portal, Ria Novosti, made the party's failure its main story.
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