The deputies of Jelgava region have agreed on a new chairman of the city council, who is yet to be named – ZZ.lv

The deputies of the Jelgava County Council have agreed on a new coalition and a new chairman of the council, Madars Lasmanis (LA), who left the position of chairman of the council after being accused of unethical behavior, told LETA agency.

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Although an agreement has been reached on a new leadership of the council and on the basis of this agreement Lasmanis has also submitted an application for resignation from the position of council chairman, the regional politicians are not in a hurry to publicly reveal the contours of the new coalition.

“That was the political agreement,” said Lasmanis. According to him, in the next few days, the submission of the deputies on the nomination of a new chairman of the council could follow, and Jelgava county could have a new leader as early as April. Lasmanis also did not reveal which of the members of the municipality could be promoted to the position of chairman, only saying that each of the other 18 members “would be worthy to occupy this position”.

Deputy Speaker of the City Council Ilze Vītola (LZS) and her party member Lolita Duge claimed that they did not know when the deputies could decide on the election of the next Speaker of the City Council. According to Duge, Vitola could occupy this position.

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Vītola, on the other hand, said that Lasmani’s resignation was a surprise. She said that possible candidacies for the chairman of the council will still be discussed among the deputies elected from the Farmers’ Union. Vītola emphasized that the negotiations will take place between all six LZS deputies, even though only four of them signed Lasmanis’ resignation request – Vītola, Duge, as well as Juris Lavenieks and Juris Razživins, while Pēteris Veļeckis and Jānis Počs did not add their signatures to it.

Lasmanis also underlined this division in the largest faction of the council. Commenting on the candidacies named before Easter – Vitols and Emīla Dobrāja (LA), he said – as long as one of them is able to gather ten council members around him, which is the minimum number of votes required to elect the chairman, then “good luck to them”. Currently, everyone can “speculate a little” on this topic, says the former chairman.

In order to become the chairman of the council, many compromises will be needed, and Vitola’s chances in this context are questionable, according to Lasmanis. “By publicly settling accounts with its coalition partner, the Farmers’ Union has proven that they are not reliable partners,” added Lasmanis, assessing the previous alliance with LZS as a mistake.

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Speaking about the possible dismissal of executive director Līga Lonertes, Lasmanis says that her actions will be evaluated, and that the majority of deputies are in favor of it. On this basis, an agreement on the new coalition was also reached between the deputies.

The executive director is said to be “quite sick” at the moment. Lasmanis is questioning the true causes of her illness. Deputies will wait for Lonerte’s recovery and then start evaluating her work.

The Jelgava County Council has 19 members representing seven political parties.

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As LETA has already reported, Jelgava County Council Chairman Lasmanis has decided to resign, according to a statement released to mass media. Lasmanis announced his resignation about an hour before the meeting of the Jelgava County Council, which was supposed to consider the request of seven deputies to remove him from his position.

Some politicians and officials of the municipality demanded to evaluate Lasmanis’s actions, while directing the session in the Budget Commission, he addressed the feet of a woman. The executive director of the municipality, Līga Lonerte (LZS), invited the members of the municipality to evaluate, in her opinion, the violation of ethics in the actions of the council chairman, by sending them a video from the commission’s March 13 meeting.

Lasmanis is proposing the dismissal of the executive director of the municipality, Līga Lonert, after Lonert and the members of the city council came up with a call to evaluate his approach to a woman’s feet at a city council commission meeting.

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In response to the publicly released information about the executive director’s connection with the Farmers’ Union, Lonerte admitted that she had previously run for election from the list of the Latvian Farmers’ Union, but was not currently a member of any political party.

Photo: jelgavasnovads.lv