Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

It's been a week now since I flew to Latvia where I took part in my first ever election observation mission! It all started last spring when I took a course called Election Observation where we learned about democracy and about how to watch elections and discourage, identify, and report election fraud. Well, our class was fortunate enough to get a chance to practice this new skill for real in Latvia last weekend.

My friend Andre and I flew down from Oslo on Thursday and spent the next two days learning about Latvia, their electoral system, and dividing into groups that would look at different aspects of the Latvian democracy. Some groups talked with the media, others with NGO's working with democracy, and my group was supposed to look into voter education. Unfortunately, we didn't have a translator before the election day, so we spent most of the time walking around the beautiful city of Riga and performing hand motions at the election centers were voters could go to get information about the candidates.

The city of Riga truly was beautiful. Parks and rivers leading to the nearby coast filled the city, and a beautiful mixture of colorful buildings, orthodox churches, and art nouveau lined the cobblestone streets. Riga, and Latvia in general, has a fascinating history as well. It was not an actual country until after World War I. Then when Hitler and Stalin signed their secret non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union was "given" Latvia. Thus, when the Germans later invaded Latvia, Latvians greeted them as liberators. They soon realized however that the Germans weren't much better. The Soviets then came back at the end of the war and occupied Latvia until the end of the Cold War. During the Soviet occupation, Latvia was dramatically changed as 40,000 Latvians disappeared to Siberia the first week of occupation and Russian became the official language. Now, Latvia is in an interesting process of rewriting their history and identity, explaining that Latvians have been a nation occupied for hundreds of years. There is a tension between Latvian speakers who make up about 60% of the population and Russian speakers, about 40%, who are often unfairly association with the past occupiers. That also is one of the only issues in politics in Latvia. Most Latvians were quick to agree to join the EU and NATO (to which they now belong), and the main issue in the election seemed to be who was more Latvian and who hated Russia more. Interestingly enough though, the President visited Russia in the spring and after that happened the official historical view of Russia was softened...crazy how history can be changed to reflect the present.

This was one of the things for us to watch for: to make sure that minorities, like Russian speakers and the Roma (gypsy) population were not discriminated against and to make sure that everyone had a chance to freely vote. To do this, we woke up early Saturday and watched the polls open at 7am. We watched them unlock the polling station and seal the ballot box. We then watched about 20 different polling stations in a Russian majority town about 50km northwest of Riga and kept track of any problems we saw. The most common problems were family voting, when a bunch of people would go into a booth at the same time, and lack of privacy when voting booths were easy to see into. Both are technically violations of the election laws, but it also is partly a cultural aspect. That was one of the challenges for me. Often I felt we were culturally observing instead of election observing, so it was difficult to say "this is wrong," when essentially you are saying "your culture is wrong." After a day of watching the polls and staying up until 2am while they counted the ballots by hand, we met with the other 10 groups and compared our results for a report that will be giving to the election commission for recommendations for the next Latvian election.

Following our days of hard work, we were able to celebrate Sunday night with a few of the other observers and some of the translators who helped the different groups. We had a great time enjoying the colorful nightlife of Riga, even on a Sunday night. The only downside is that Riga is considered a weekend holiday spot, especially for British men, so there is an excessive amount of escort women and drunk foreigners. Fortunately, there are also a lot of great people and places! I was wiped out after the quick trip to Riga, but thankful for the experience, even if I really didn't do too much to "protect" (impose?) democracy. Now I'm resting up for a fun weekend of concerts and costumes. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, check out the pictures from Riga.