Instead of defending its honor and dignity with all its might against the large and influential newspaper Bild in Germany, the New Conservative Party (Jaunā konservatīvā partija, JKP) has announced that it will turn to the police against Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze, which published a story about the German publication.
There is an explanation for this. The Latvian JKP politicians have no influence on the German rule of law. There it would be a fair competition.
Latvia is another matter. Here, Minister of Justice Jānis Bordāns and Head of the Saeima Legal Affairs Committee Juris Jurašs feel like fish in water - the judiciary may not be completely in their pockets yet, but it is close to that.
Bordāns has, for example, set up a special court for economic cases, which is considered to be the minister's "pocket court". The courts that have been privatized by politicians can hand down judgments that the politician in his party office has written for them. As in Belarus. As in Russia.
The most absurd judgments without any logic are possible.
But there is hope that the JKP may not be in the 14th Saeima after October 1, that it will no longer be an influential party. The party's ratings are poor - about the same as the Latvian Russian Union (Latvijas Krievu savienība).
The story was that the German newspaper Bild had published serious insults against the Latvian state and accusations against influential Latvian politicians. As soon as Neatkarīgā received the link to the Bild publication, it immediately contacted all the people and institutions allegedly involved in the story. There were many of them because the spectrum of accusations published by Germans is very wide. Bild reported that North Korean billions were being laundered in Latvia, that our supervisory authorities were covering up a flood of dirty money from Russia, that the Minister for Justice and the Head of the Legal Affairs Committee received a €500,000 bribe to allow the PNB bank to be robbed and that the Head of our Government is covering up corruption at the highest level. No names were mentioned, but the positions mentioned are sufficient to identify the specific individuals in question in relation to the mentioned time period.
Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze found many of these allegations to be dubious, one might even say lies, and urged that these allegations be addressed. But millions of German speakers saw them as pure truth. It was evident that much of the information was being disseminated in their own interests by two has-been but still influential figures on the international scene - August Hanning, former head of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO boss, who were the victims of a "bank robbery allegedly organized by the Latvian state". Both were members of the Supervisory Board of the Latvian credit institution PNB Bank, which is in liquidation, and are now on trial for failing to spot the bank robbery under their noses.
Neither the government nor any of the parties forming the government have reacted in any way to the Bild publication, which smears Latvia in the ugliest way. Nothing about it. But the JKP has attacked Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze - with a penchant and a claim for censorship and the banning of the free press.
Now one has to start thinking that perhaps someone in the top leadership of the JKP is not entirely blameless about the transfer of €500,000 from PNB Bank. Otherwise, why would the leadership of the JKP need to intimidate those who want to find out the truth with the police?