Parties Spamming "Under the Radar"

I had promised myself I would never, ever write about politics on this site, but I can no longer hold back. Every day, without fail, party SPAM keeps arriving at the office email and in the letterbox at home. I must say, in these elections the parties have spammed in earnest - they have mastered the latest technologies and are keeping up with the times: candidates' profiles on draugiem.lv, blogs, email newsletters, discussion forums and so on.

The most active in using online media for the pre-election campaign is, in my view, the party "New Era" (Jaunais Laiks). Today I received even two emails at the office - from Iluta Lāce and Gerda Kristapsone, with appeals to "vote for me by placing a cross next to my name". The subject line of the last sender's email was somewhat puzzling: "Gerda Kristapsone's plea" - surely one needn't beg so hard for voters' mercy that one lacks strong arguments to prove one's position.

I appreciate the openness to discussion shown by several MPs - even on draugiem.lv - with Krišjānis Kariņš, Solvita Āboltiņa and Valdis Dombrovskis having created profiles, public diaries and participation in forums. Moreover, the last-mentioned has also set up his own blog - www.valdisdombrovskis.lv
The party's chosen image - the "pīrādziņš" (a small Latvian pastry) - is of course a hit! From video clips right through to the widely circulated letter of indignation from a home economics teacher at Riga Secondary School No. 84 - how can one treat food like this, and what did they mean by it? The footnote that this teacher lost her job a month ago and is now, by misinterpreting the party's allegorical idea and with the help of SPAM, trying to sell cakes, evokes the old favourite SWH advertising slogan: "there are people who don't make it - and it's good that they don't".

"People's Party" (Tautas Partija), meanwhile, sticks to the good old method of spamming letterboxes. This morning I even fished out a substantial "picture book" - "YES, work must be done!" - featuring photographs of Andris Ārgalis on almost all of its 32 pages. Quite a weighty publication - no expense spared on paper and printing ink. Interesting is the spread with a map marking where MPs work and live; I found no phone numbers or email addresses - apparently the potential voter's opinion is not particularly important; the main thing is to show off about living in Riga's Central district (I found no candidate from my own district on the map :(.

I received a similar but slightly thinner "little picture book" from "For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK" (Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK) as well. Cover to cover the idea of "LATVIAN national interests" is set out (emphasis on the first word, in case anyone still hasn't grasped it). I appreciate this party's cheerful yellowish colour and the use of national ornament motifs in the party's visual identity. But why must all the photographs be so strikingly gloomy and grey, with candidates' brow-furrowing faces? (especially Jānis Birks's care-laden face with a fist in the foreground, which involuntarily made me smile). Does this party really wish to identify itself so strongly with this period of Latvia's economic crisis, and must Latvian national identity forever be something gloomy rather than bright, life-affirming, inviting active engagement and evoking national vitality? Latvia so lacks sunshine and human warmth...

The party "LPP/LC" (Latvia's First Party/Latvian Way) needn't have thought about a logo at all or hired designers - a Photoshopped image of Ainars Šlesers's face would have sufficed, since it is now visible on every street corner - credit where it's due. I must admit I have not received a single electronic mailing from this party. Presumably the pre-election party budget is so large that there is no need to stoop to the level of ordinary people. The party's campaign programme is dominated by large-format outdoor advertising, mobile advertising stands and enviably long advertising slots on television.

I have always been fascinated by this party's and its "bulldozer's" self-assurance in words and in slogans chanted without any of the lethargy inherent in the Latvian mentality: "I will lift Riga up! Riga will be like this! There will be no slums in Riga! It will be so!" Who knows - were those skills acquired through frequent communication with our country's eastern neighbour, or from the charismatic speeches of New Generation leader Aleksandrs Ļedjajevs before audiences?

Where did Šlesers come from? - http://www.slesersrigai.lv/lat/par-mani/ - I recommend watching Šlesers's video biography - "...he cried long and insistently, which is why he was named Ainārs". :)

The pan-European political movement "Libertas" has also sent a SPAM with the subject "Political Elite" to email addresses. The mailing visually resembles a periodic electronic newsletter in two languages - Latvian and English, with the latter being dominant (well OK, we are in Europe). The first sentence I read in this mailing: "You're receiving this newsletter because you signed up to get updates from Libertas." I don't recall having visited this political party's website before or signed up anywhere for information. Now, preparing the article and visiting the website, the first thing I encountered was a registration form asking me to enter my email address (true, not a mandatory form, but still - I came here only for information, not to leave my data).

There is also a portion of anonymous or semi-anonymous spammers - for example, an appeal from the National Bloc with an attached image of a barometer, so all Riga residents would know "who is who". Then there is a string of what might be called "leaflet parties", which try to cram the essentials into smaller sheets - moreover in what they consider the two state languages: Latvian and Russian. Yesterday, for example, the letterbox contained a leaflet from the "Action Party" (Rīcības partija) with an extensive calculation table, in which only current officials' and statesmen's salaries were divided by the number of hospital beds.

So that is how my efforts to ignore posters with pastries, dead flies, serious faces and Šlesers ended up becoming an article - as the visual-minded and otherwise "endearingly" natured side of me gained the upper hand. The only thing that still doesn't seem quite humanly comprehensible to me is the excessively frantic scramble for power at such a difficult moment for the country (we haven't experienced such an extensive campaign to choose the right candidates in a long time) - and the foam-at-the-mouth promises to bring Latvia into full bloom. Either patriotic conscience has spoken and so many people have suddenly appeared with a hitherto undiscovered talent for politics and leadership, or I am becoming a terrible cynic and cannot understand what there is still left to steal here - unless they are banking on the loan money that is about to arrive in Latvia any day now?