‘No-nonsense’ is a phrase that comes to mind when meeting Latvia’s former president Dr Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who spoke exclusively to CATHERINE REILLY during her visit to Dublin last week
Dr Vaira Vike-Freiberga fields a call from a French radio station in a typically opulent room in The State Apartments at Dublin Castle, having just emerged from her address at the National Forum on Europe.
Her second term as president of Latvia may have ended last July, but Vike-Freiberga, a former UN secretary-general candidate, is showing few signs of drifting into obscurity. Her appointment the next day to a senior position on the EU’s ‘Reflection Group’, which will look at the future direction of the European Union, affirms this view.
It signals another eventful chapter for Vike-Freiberga, who spent her early years in a German refugee camp during World War II, after her family fled the Soviet invasion of Latvia. Her life to date is remarkable in a number of ways, not least because she became Latvia’s first female president in 1999 – a position to which she was elected by the Saeima (Latvian parliament) – despite living most of her life away from her birth-land.
During her address at the National Forum on Europe, and in the questions-and-answers session, she rejected suggestions that the EU Reform Treaty should be put to a referendum in Latvia, arguing that Latvians had already approved the substance of the treaty in its referendum before acceding to the EU in 2004.
She also defended Latvia’s Nato membership, commenting: “One cannot think of a nation or its people’s attitude to security without looking at its history.” She said Latvia by itself would not have “a snowball’s chance in hell” of defending its independence against any future aggressors.
Afterwards, Vike-Freiberga answered questions from Metro Eireann. The following is an edited version of that conversation:
This is a question that’s very relevant for Latvians in Ireland, especially those who have children. You’ve lived in Germany, Morocco and Canada; how did you manage to preserve your Latvian identity all those years away from Latvia?
With difficulty. It wasn’t always easy – I had to work at it. We had to work at it for our children who were born in Montreal, and we had all sorts of tricks to get them to speak Latvian.
What kinds of tricks?
For instance, my husband would give them more pocket money if they spoke Latvian, not just with us but maybe among themselves – and also to induce them to go to Latvian school. They did have compensation, because then we did fun things too, like youth festivals and whatnot.
They actually danced on the stage of Place des Arts where only great artists go. The Latvian community rented the great Place des Arts, the great concert theatre in Montreal, for a Latvian youth festival, and my children at the time were dancing in a local dance group and later they were proud – they said to their classmates ‘I was dancing on the stage at the Place des Arts.’
In terms of preservation of identity, Ireland is economically benefiting from thousands of Latvians coming here to work. Do you think Ireland should have a major role in promoting Latvian culture and language among the community here, especially the children?
Firstly, I think that encouraging them to keep in touch with their roots would be a wise decision. Canada came to that decision about its immigrants by introducing a multiculturalism policy.
I know that at some point I myself as a representative of the Latvian community in Canada went to talk to representatives of both the Montreal municipality and Quebec government about support for our Latvian Saturday school and things of that nature.
These community efforts need very little support from official sources to continue functioning, but that support can go a long way. You get ‘big bang for the buck’, as the Americans say. Every euro invested I think would bring dividends.
In the case of the children, it would give them a sense of pride in who they are and where they come from, and a self-confidence that would make them, if they decide to stay in Ireland and become Irish citizens, I think it will make them better Irish citizens than if they were rootless, feeling somehow not belonging, sort of floating in a nothingness between two cultures, and not having a sense of their roots.
We see that in the ghettos and the banlieues of big cities in France, where we have large populations of Africans and north Africans who feel not part of French society even though they have French citizenship and should have long since integrated into the society. They are neither integrated in French society, nor have they kept such a deep sense of their own roots either. Neither fish nor fowl, and I think that is the mistake.
When you returned to live in Latvia, what kind of reaction did you get, having been away for most of your life?
I was surprised to what extent I was accepted. To me it was very important, of course, because I had at various times in my life felt this business of being an outsider in various ways, subtle and not so subtle.
I read that when you were president you received thousands of letters from your fellow citizens. What kinds of things did people write to you about?
Well, we got over 12,000 letters in the first year, and so you can imagine we got the whole spectrum of the diversity of humanity. Some people who had a bee in their bonnet had been writing to [the predecessor] President Ulanis about some pet peeve, and naturally they continued to write about their pet peeve to me, and they are now writing about their pet peeve to my successor [President Valdis Zatlers]. That’s one contingent if you like.
Then you have your enthusiastic supporters – like a fan club. And then there are people who may take one word out of context: ‘somebody said that you said’, and I never said that in the first place. They write and say ‘how dare you say that’, and I write back to them ‘I never did say that’, [laughs] and try to engage in dialogue.
I had great satisfaction as serving as an ombudsman in many ways, and I worked very hard as president to get the parliament to approve the legislation which instituted an ombudsman in Latvia – we have one since last spring. I think the country needs somebody like that, where there’s a chance for a citizen to go and complain about institutions or the people who work in institutions not being up to scratch and not having the answer to their needs.
Just on the topic of discrimination within Latvia, I read that last year the parliament didn’t pass legislation in relation to discrimination in employment on sexual orientation grounds. Latvia, as well as Poland and Lithuania, have often been portrayed in the news here and in prominent international media coverage as being ‘homophobic’ countries. Do you think that is the case with Latvia?
I suppose Latvians are not quite ready for gay pride, which is what the question was about. You see, there was an idea of holding a parade down a street about gay pride. Latvians are in a way… generally in the culture you do not parade your intimacy out on the street. And I think for many Latvians it wasn’t a matter of it being, if you like, same sex or different sex. It was about sexuality being paraded down the street.
For many Latvians, this was the issue they objected to. They said, ‘I don’t care what you do in your bedroom, as long as you don’t harm somebody, but why do you have to parade about your sexuality in a public space, and my children have to watch it?’ And we have in our culture this reticence about the expression of intimate feelings and about your intimate life, which in other cultures has been lost.
Some people are against homosexuality, notably our Cardinal Pujats. And yes, there is certainly a difference of opinion about it. Whether the proportion of people who are not ready to accept same sex marriages in front of the courts, whether it’s higher in Latvia than in the [other] new member countries, nobody has actually done surveys on it.
But in terms of discrimination in employment on sexual orientation grounds, this is covered in Latvian law?
We already have laws on the books that forbid discrimination, so in a way it was redundant. The modifications to the bill in question were fortunately, for the sake of democracy, already subsumed under other laws. I myself as president [tried] to make it explicit, I thought it would be more precise and more appropriate that it be explicitly stated that discrimination according to sexual orientation is not permissible. But it’s not permissible in our law books anyway. And if anyone was discriminated against they could go to court, and they would win.
In terms of the increasing labour shortages in Latvia, would you go as far as to say that Ireland, in the future, might have to have some sort of role in facilitating some Latvians to return home, and focus on other areas of the world to source its labour?
That’s an interesting thought – I hadn’t heard that one before! We would certainly like to see many of them return home – as many as possible, as a matter of fact. We are a country that is not densely populated, so we have room enough. We are a country that needs both the labour and the skilled workers [in order] to keep growing and developing the way we want. And we are hoping that they will come back from, say, Ireland, richer in experience as well as perhaps having saved up some money.
But we know it’s human nature that some of them will intermarry with people here, or their children will be so attached to the place of their birth that they won’t want to leave. And we are going to lose a number of them. One wouldn’t want to have them expelled or forced to return to their place of origin, that wouldn’t be democratic. But to facilitate returning for those who are ready to do it, I think we should be very happy about that.
Staying with Latvians in Ireland, there has been significant exploitation of migrant construction workers, for example, in terms of them not being paid the proper construction pay rates. On the other side, there have been many cases of drink/dangerous driving among Latvians in Ireland. Do you think the Latvian government should be taking a much more proactive stance on these issues?
Well I got figures when I was still president about the rate of accidents in Ireland by age group and by origin, and as you know, in the rate of accidents the biggest factor is age – it’s young men who are the biggest cause of road accidents, whether by drink driving or otherwise.
In these figures, when you look at the proportion of accidents and the number of Latvians in Ireland, the proportions were exactly equal. In other words, there were more young men in them, but the number of Latvian young men as related to young men of any other origin did not stand out.
I think what happens when there is a road accident – when it’s a ‘Patrick Mahoney’ who has an accident – nobody pays much attention. [But] when it’s someone with a Latvian name, and he’s identified in the newspapers as ‘Latvian man gets killed in accident’, then people remember. And you get the focusing effect, and people say ‘oh my heavens, that’s how many of them already?’ But they are not really counting the Irish ones at the same time.
We have actually hard statistics, and it turns out this is an illusion. But in Latvia, of course, we do have drink driving because alcohol is one of the problems in Latvia. We are one of those northern populations that actually don’t hold alcohol very well.
And in terms of the scale of exploitation of construction workers in Ireland – I’m not sure if it’s made the news in Latvia, but surely the government of Latvia should have a role there in working with Ireland to combat it?
Well I’ve talked to the ambassador here and he can only help the people who come to him for help. When they ask for [help], they get it.
Finally, inflation in Latvia is very high. For Latvians in Ireland who are thinking of returning, when do you think it’ll be reasonable for them to expect that they will be able to do so?
Well if I was a prophet and able to predict it, I should be a millionaire. I’d make a lot of money on the stock exchange and so on. I can’t tell you, we’d only be guessing. And I have heard from serious economists a wide range of predications, in terms of some saying it’s 15 years, others say it’ll take 30, and others say 40 and some say it’ll never happen.
Everything is possible; the world is constantly changing, so we don’t know. What we do know is that we have had incredible progress in the last few years, much more than anybody expected. But the rest of the world is not standing still. Ireland is evolving as well at the same time. We are starting at the back of the race; we are not starting at an equal [footing].
How would you like to see Latvia in 10 years’ time?
I think it’s possible to be in the average range income in Europe. But it would take very hard work and effort, for sure.
Is there anything else you‘d like to comment on that I’ve not mentioned?
I want to wish everyone a merry Christmas! And to never forget their family, especially the ones who are here who have left, say, children in Latvia or are split from families… please reunite. I would urge them to reunite for Christmas.
