Latvia to get Jewish president?

Israel National News ^ | 29 May 2019 | INN

[Cronos]

The Latvian parliament will on Wednesday choose the Baltic state's next president, with long-time European Court of Justice judge and former Soviet dissident Egils Levits the frontrunner.

The German-educated 63-year-old, is the candidate of the governing coalition parties for the largely ceremonial role and has the backing of at least 55 members in the 100-seat parliament. ..

Levits and his parents, Latvian patriots of Jewish origin, were expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 because the KGB viewed them as a threat to the Communist regime.

The family settled in Germany, where Levits obtained law and political science degrees before returning to Latvia a decade later and entering politics.

Levits wrote the country's 1990 declaration of independence following the end of the Soviet occupation.

He later served as a member of parliament, justice minister and ambassador to Switzerland, Hungary, Germany and Austria.

In 1995, he was appointed to the European Court of Human Rights before taking on his current position as a judge at the European Court of Justice in 2004.

... All three candidates have dismissed political cooperation with Russia, whose annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in eastern Ukraine have spooked the Baltic region.

Latvia has been governed since January by a coalition of the center-right parties New Unity and National Alliance, the liberal Development/FOR!, the New Conservatives and some members of the populist KPV LV party.