Baku-APA. Inara Murniece of the National Alliance was elected on Tuesday the new speaker of Latvian parliament in the first session of the new parliament, APA reports quoting Xinhua.
The 100-seat parliament elected Murniece with 68 votes in favor and 30 against. One ballot paper was found to be invalid.
Latvia's new parliament, the 12th Saeima, convened its first session on Tuesday, which took place a month after Latvia's 2014 parliamentary election, which was held on October 4.
At its first session, the parliament elected an interim mandates, ethics and submissions committee whose members checked election documents and complaints about the election.
The committee rejected the proposal, submitted by the opposition leftist Harmony, to suspend the mandate of Dzintars Zakis, an MP of the ruling centre-right Unity party, for three months over his alleged involvement in vote buying, BNS reported.
Initially, mandates were only approved for 99 of the parliament's 100 members as Juris Vilums of the Latvian Bloc of Regions refused to read his lawmaker's oath in literary Latvian and insisted on reading it in Latgalian, a dialect spoken in eastern Latvia.
The interim mandates, ethics and submissions committee, however, decided to accept Vilums' oath of office in Latgalian, and the parliament approved his mandate as well.
In Latvia's previous parliament Murniece chaired the human rights and public affairs committee. She is now replacing Solvita Aboltina of the Unity as parliament speaker.
Earlier Murniece told BNS about her priorities if she was elected speaker of the new parliament.
"During my three years in the Saeima I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to think how to speed up and enhance the process of legislation. In Lithuania's Seimas, for instance, there is a whole department doing in-depth analysis. Lawmakers can request this department to thoroughly examine technical issues concerning work on complicated bills," Murniece said, adding that the creation of a similar department also in the Latvian parliament would help improve the quality of laws.
To secure Latvia's successful Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) in the first half of 2015 would be another priority of the new parliament speaker.
Her third priority would be increasing public confidence in the parliament.
In Latvia's new parliament the leftist Harmony party has 24 mandates, the centre-right Unity 23, the centrist Greens and Farmers Union (ZZS) 21, the right-wing National Alliance 17, the Latvian Bloc of Regions eight and For Latvia from the Heart seven mandates.
The Unity, ZZS and the National Alliance have formed a coalition, which together has 61 seats in the parliament.
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