LATVIA:

One hundred seats were at stake in last week’s parliamentary elections. No clear winner emerged, with left- and right-wing parties holding a balance around a badly divided center. The People’s Party, founded earlier this year when former prime minister Andris Skele led his faction out of the Popular Front, took twenty-one seats, more than any other party. Skele’s erstwhile allies in the Popular Front, now calling themselves Latvia’s Way, took twenty-one seats. The right-wing Fatherland and Freedom party will have seventeen seats, and three parties on the left will divide the remainder. All candidates run nationwide, and seats are awarded in proportion to total vote, with a minimum of 5 percent required for representation.