Election commission cannot yet remove Uzulnieks from parliamentary candidate list
Although the Union of Greens and Farmers has dismissed Reinis Uzulnieks as welfare minister and expelled him from the party following his arrest for drunk driving, Latvia's Central Election Commission says it cannot yet strike him from the parliamentary election list.
Latvia's Central Election Commission (CVK) currently has no grounds to remove Reinis Uzulnieks from the candidate list for the upcoming Saeima elections, despite the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) recalling him as welfare minister and expelling him from the party, and Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs issuing an order removing him from his ministerial duties. CVK's public relations head, Iveta Rozenfelde, explained the situation to the news portal Delfi.
Court ruling required
According to Rozenfelde, the Saeima Election Law specifies which individuals cannot be nominated or elected to parliament, while changes to candidate lists can only be made by the commission based on information from a relevant authority or a court ruling. Since no court ruling exists in this case yet, the commission currently lacks legal grounds to strike Uzulnieks from the list.
Rozenfelde added that if information about a candidate's disqualification arrives later than 50 days before the election — after new ballots can no longer be printed — voters would still receive the pre-printed ballots bearing that candidate's name. In such cases, votes cast for that person simply would not be counted when calculating election results.
Arrest for severe intoxication
Uzulnieks was detained after municipal police in Stopiņi parish, Ropaži municipality, stopped the Škoda he was driving and recorded a blood alcohol level of 3.09 per mille; other sources have cited a level as high as 3.5 per mille. The ZZS board unanimously voted at an emergency meeting to remove Uzulnieks from his ministerial post and expel him from the party, citing zero tolerance for such incidents. A party representative noted that Uzulnieks can nevertheless still run in the election, as the party has no control over that.
Since 2022, driving in Latvia with a blood alcohol concentration above 1.5 per mille has been a criminal offense, punishable by up to one year of imprisonment, probationary supervision, a five-year driving ban, and possible confiscation of property.
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