Latvian Prime Minister resigns taking responsibility over supermarket collapse, which killed 54.

I have not seen any threads on the matter. I don´t bother searching out the sources currently, as most are local ones. I just talk from the viewpoint of local media channels, which have the most detailed newspieces on the matter.


Last week, a tragic accident happened in Riga, the Latvian capital, when a large supermarket´s roof collapsed, killing 54 people. So far, there is no reports on who caused the collapse, although it is widely believed the company who built made some errors in their technical plans, whether intentionally in order to save money or unintentionally as an accident, although criminal investigation will find out who caused it and the company leaders are held responsible if it was their fault. This was a national catastrophe, one of the largest accidents ever happened in the country. Really a very sad story, something that should not happen in the world of today.

Today the Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis (the most powerful person in the country (in US system comparable to US president), president holds significantly less power, being mainly a representative figure), who had been in power since 2009, being the leader of 3 consecutive governments, resigned taking responsibility over the tragedy, despite directly having nothing to do with the accident. As part of the austerity cuts, the national building inspections were cut down (although these still existed in private sector).

Nothing, but respect for him on the matter. One of the few politicians who have moral values. When he talked about the reasons, he told that it was government oversight failure on the matter and as he is in charge of the government, he takes full responsibility over it as the government´s job to secure its citizens from accidents like that. That deserves extremely high respect in my eyes.


Found a couple of good articles on the matter in international media, if someone is interested in more details.

www.dailymail.co.uk...
online.wsj.com...
www.ft.com...

reply to post by Cabin


Got to admire the guy for taking it on the chin, as opposed to other types of Politicians who would squirm, wiggle and lie until forced out, kicking and screaming.

It has to be said thougn that the PM is credited with staving of bankruptcy in Latvia, so it would seem that the country has now lost a leader who is actually quite good at what he does... A double blow.