RIGA — Despite the harsh austerity measures the government is enacting to keep its budget under an agreed-upon deficit cap, Latvian parliament members that lose their next election will receive a three-month salary stipend.

The Saeima has earmarked 293,000 lats (€417,000) to be paid as compensation as a three months salary for each person losing his or her seat the parliament. According to statistics about two-thirds of the 100 parliamentarians are not re-elected every election.

Saeima speaker Gundars Daudze is one of the most vocal defenders of this compensation system even during the current economical crisis. “I guess you want everybody to be poor, right?” Daudze said at a press conference. Daudze pointed that parliamentarians have left the job market during their mandate period and that they need financial help until they find a new job.

Most of the parliamentarians do not consider revising the current regulations for compensations. Some of them, like Union of Greens and Farmers parliamentary fraction leader Augusts Brigmanis, view such changes as populism. With upcoming parliament elections next year, this kind of rhetorics has become a frequent gesture from Latvian politicians.

Bad press

Journalist Maris Zanders almost lost words on his radio show Tuesday when commenting on the issue.

“They should stop this gibberish about populism. In this case it is not a qustion about the money, but about principles,” Zanders later told Baltic Reports. “It is true that these few hundred thousand lats would not help pensionaries. But if parliamentarians speak about solidarity in this crisis situation, they should stick to the principle of solidarity themselves. ”

But parliamentarian Dagnija Stake still argues in favour of the compensations. In the interview to Latvian Radio Stake said that after 15 years in politics she has no chance to get a job in her professional field which is very specific. Before entering politics in the mid-nineties Stake was teaching music pedagogics.

“Dagnija Stake has all the possibilities open, as everybody else. She can use the wonderful arrangements of her party comrade [minister for welfare] Uldis Augulis and go to the State Employment Agency. There she can take part in some courses and get new professional skills. I really don’t understand why she should be treated differently than other teachers,” Zanders said.

Part of the reason the Saeima is squeamish to defer the severance package is that deputies in Saeima have reduced their salaries two times this year and now are getting 986 lats (€1,403), which is 54 percent of the original amount.