LATVIA….

No one would confuse Riga with Roma, but there is an Italianate quality to the rotation of governments in the Latvian capital. After just nine months in office, Prime Minister Andris Skele resigned with his cabinet on April 12. This government was Latvia’s ninth in ten years, and Skele’s third. It balanced three center-right parties that hold twenty-four, twenty-one and sixteen seats each in the country’s 100-seat parliament. When the smallest of the three bolted–over scandals involving money and sex–the government lost its majority. As in Italy under the Christian Democrats, Latvia’s governments do not last, but the same forty or fifty people return to power again and again in slightly altered coalitions. Apparent turmoil masks an underlying stability that amounts almost to stagnation. Skele and his ministers will remain in office until a new coalition emerges.