General Secretary Raivis Zeltīts | ||
Co-chairmen Gaidis Bērziņš and
Raivis Dzintars Founded 2010 (2010) (electoral alliance)
23 July 2011 (2011-07-23) (party) Merger of All For Latvia! and TB/LNNK Headquarters Kaļķu iela 11 3.stāvs Riga LV-1050 Youth wing Nacionālās apvienības jauniešu organizācija | ||
The National Alliance, officially the National Alliance "All For Latvia!" – "For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK" (Latvian: Nacionālā apvienība „Visu Latvijai!” – „Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK”), abbreviated to NA, is a right-wing political party in Latvia. With seventeen seats in the Saeima, the National Alliance is the fourth-largest party in the parliament. The party is a coalition of conservatives, Latvian ethnonationalists, and economic liberals.
Contents
Formed as an electoral alliance for the 2010 election, the National Alliance brought together For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK and All for Latvia!. It won eight seats, placing it fourth amongst all parties. It merged into a single political party in July 2011 under the leadership of Gaidis Bērziņš and Raivis Dzintars. In the October 2014 election, it again increased its seats to seventeen, and entered a centre-right coalition, along with Unity and the Union of Greens and Farmers under Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma. The Party has participated in every government of Latvia since the 2011 parliamentary election to avoid Harmony Center from entering leading coalition.
It is a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe and its one MEP, Roberts Zīle, sits in the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament.
History
It was founded as an electoral alliance in 2010 by national-conservative For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK and far right All For Latvia! after the two parties were refused entry into the Unity alliance. The loose alliance was transformed into a unitary party on 23 July 2011. In the 2010 election to the Saeima, the alliance won 8 seats. As part of the outgoing government it was involved in negotiations after the election to renew the coalition, but was vetoed by the Society for Political Change, which had not been part of the government but had joined the Unity alliance.
In May 2011, the party supported the re-election of Valdis Zatlers as President of Latvia in the 2011 election. The alliance became a single united party on 23 July 2011. At the 2011 parliamentary election, the National Alliance won fourteen seats – an increase of six on the previous year – making it the fourth-largest party. After extensive negotiations with an aim to avoid Kremlin supporting powers from gaining seats in government, it joined a centre-right government with Unity and Zatlers' Reform Party, with the party's Gaidis Bērziņš as Minister for Justice and Žaneta Jaunzeme-Grende as Minister for Culture.
On 23 August 2013, All for Latvia! wing of National Alliance signed the Declaration of Bauska together with Conservative People's Party of Estonia and Lithuanian Nationalist Union. The declaration calls for a new national awakening of the Baltic states and warns about threats posed by international globalism, multiculturalism and Russian imperial ambitions.
The merging period of the two founding parties was ended on the National Alliance's third congress on 7 December 2013, finally creating one unitary party.
In October 2014 Saeima election, Party gained 17 seats in Parliament, and entered a centre-right coalition, along with Unity and the Union of Greens and Farmers under Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma. The party succeeded to include several points in the Declaration of the government and coalition treaty: to begin gradual latvianisation of the bilingual educational system starting from 2018; to limit the residence permit trading programme established in 2010, increase state support to family values and the demography programme; to make national identity, Latvian language and culture as priority as it is defined in the Constitution (Satversme); opening of natural gas market in order to end the Gazprom monopoly in the Latvian energy market; veto rights to any decision which could weaken the positions of the Latvian language.
Since the beginning of the protests in Maidan, the Party takes a very pro-Ukrainian position regarding the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, thus suggesting the government to take a stricter anti-Kremlin position.
The Party actively opposes immigration - both the residence permit selling programme and the refugee quota system intended by EC, emphasizing the big number of Soviet time settlers in Latvia and even comparing liberal refugee supporters with collaborators, who supported the planned immigration under the Soviet occupation. The Party was the only one of the leading coalition partners, which completely refused both the refugee quota system, as well as voluntary acceptation of refugees. The Party took part in organizing the massive anti-immigration rally in Rīga, August 2015. This anti-immigration position was accented in the annual foreign affair debates in Saeima, also turning against liberal immigration policy and political correctness in EU.