Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis has called on citizens to oppose making Russian a second state language in the forthcoming referendum in February, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported.
The statement came after the Baltic state’s Constitutional Court denied on Friday a petition by two governing parties to cancel the referendum, due on February 18.
“I call on everyone to vote against [Nil] Ushakov and [Vladimir] Linderman’s initiative,” Dombrovskis told journalists later on Friday, referring to the Riga mayor, who has backed the referendum, and one of its initiators.
Russian-speakers make up 44% of Latvia's 2.3-million population. Latvian is the official state language and Russian is treated as a foreign language.
Latvia’s Central Election Commission gathered signatures last November for a petition to hold a nationwide referendum on granting Russian official-language status.
Over 187,000 eligible voters signed the petition, well above the minimum requirement of 154,379 signatures.
Latvian President Andris Berzins has called the referendum proposal a “deliberate incitement,” saying that its results “will not settle any of the important problems for the nation.” He said, however, that cancelling the referendum was a bad idea because this would “leave the question unanswered.”
Last month, Berzins introduced a draft law to the parliament that envisioned amendments to the Constitution introducing a second state language in the country. Lawmakers rejected the measure.
