Latvian Constitutional Referendum, 2008 - Background

Background

The moves to initiate the referendum began in Autumn 2007 at a time of public discontent with the government which had led to the largest street protests to date in the post-Soviet era.

The movement to organise the referendum was led by the Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia. The referendum also took place at a time of poor economic indicators with inflation exceeding 17 percent and economic growth expected to fall to near zero.

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