United List office organised prime minister’s Liepāja visit, report finds

The United List party office and Liepāja party leader and former mayor Uldis Sesks organised a visit to Kurzeme that was officially presented as a working trip by Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs and two ministers, Latvian Television’s De Facto reported.

Kulbergs made the claim in an interview published this week by the Liepāja news site liepājniekiem.lv. He spoke to the journalist while walking through Liepāja’s Pētertirgus market during working hours with parliamentary candidates wearing United List campaign shirts.

The visit drew attention after photographs showed ministers and other politicians standing on a combine harvester. On the first Friday in August, at the Pīlādži farm in Durbe, Dienvidkurzeme Municipality, at least three ministers, the prime minister, several members of parliament, municipal and European Parliament representatives, and other United List figures climbed onto the harvester.

Two buses decorated with United List symbols and images of parliamentary candidates stood next to the combine in the field.

The event was not a spontaneous stop at the family farm of Edgars Putra, a United List member and parliamentary secretary at the Finance Ministry. A trip programme prepared by the United List office and obtained by De Facto shows that the photograph on the combine was the first stop on a longer itinerary, many of whose locations were linked to party members or supporters.

The true beneficiary of Grobiņa-based RK Metāls is Uldis Pīlēns, the initiator of the United List. The owner of Liepājas papīrs is Jānis Vilnītis, a United List board member and Liepāja municipal councillor. Sesks, who leads the Liepāja party within the United List, is chairman of the board of the Liepāja Special Economic Zone.

Meanwhile, Kulberg’s official calendar described his activities on August 7 only as a regional visit to Kurzeme, without providing further details.