The case was terminated without seeing a violation in the activities of the Participant.
Vitaly Orlov, President of the Commission (Consistency) told LETA that MEPs had today voted to close the infringement case. Orlov and the party associations voted that the participant should be punished For development / About! politicians, but members of the New Conservative Party and the National Union opposed it. The other members of the commission abstained.
Orlov recalled that he was ready to look at it immediately after the case was opened at the last sitting, as all the arguments had already been made at that time. However, several members of the commission offered to adjourn the case. “I really don’t want to think it was an element of some kind of trade, but in my experience, I can’t rule out the possibility that MEPs who previously thought the case should be initiated but closed the vote today would have talked something,” the politician said.
He also reminded that in the previous term, MP Mārtiņš Bondars (AP) had written a petition about MP Karlis Sergantas (ZZS) for his anti-Semitic statements. At that time, Sergeant tried to convince the commission that they were just awkward expressions, but today Iesalnieks has not even tried to do so, Orlov said.
“I believe that Iesalnieks was already aware of his recordings on social media, which, in my opinion, is not acceptable. Such recordings can be written by an ordinary person, but not by a Saeima deputy who has a lot of attention from the public,” said Orlov.
The Commission had previously agreed at a forthcoming meeting to discuss whether the Code of Ethics had been breached, and subsequently to decide on a possible sanction.
The commission looked at the party associations “For Development / For!” The submission of the Saeima faction, in which it is requested to evaluate the actions of Iesalnieks, retouching an entry on the microblogging site “Twitter”, in which hate against LGBT persons in Latvia is expressed.
In his application to the commission, Pavluts noted that on July 13, he Twitter observed that Iesalnieks shared an entry with an image with the text “LGBT-free zone”, which, in the opinion of the politician, is related to inciting social hatred and discord towards a certain social group – LGBT people in Latvia – and “appears to refer to the Saeima Code of Ethics infringements “.
The application explained that in the particular case the crime had been committed with a photograph stylistically depicting an emblem denoting a free zone from a certain social group – LGBT people – the politician explained, adding that the entry was similar in wording to the World War II sign “judenfrei “or” free of Jews, “which was used to refer to the territories where Jews were deported or murdered.
The participant stated at the commission meeting that when retweeting the entry, he did not express his support for it, but only clarified its translation. He also expressed the view that with such an appeal to the commission For development / About! expands ideological struggles and tries to silence conservative speakers.
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