LATVIAN Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma said yesterday that she was resigning her post after political squabbles within her center-right ruling coalition and dissatisfaction about her leadership.

    Straujuma made the announcement after meeting with the country’s President Raimonds Vejonis. She gave no more details. Straujuma’s hawkish ruling coalition won a 2014 general election after taking a hard-line over the actions of Russia, its neighbor and former ruler, in Ukraine.

    The coalition was made up of the Unity party, the Nationalist Alliance and the Union of Greens and Farmers. But many members were unhappy with her leadership style.

    “She has been quite a good prime minister in the sense that she has been able to consolidate this very diverse ruling coalition. But at the same time, there was quite a serious problem of political leadership,” political analyst Ivars Ijabs said.

    “The ruling party was very much dissatisfied with this very kind of ambiguous and grey, and very civil service-like behavior of Straujuma,” Ijabs said.

    President Vejonis said he regretted that “internal political quarrels” had scuppered Straujuma’s government and called on the political parties to rapidly hammer out a new leadership for the Baltic country.

    Latvia is a member of both NATO and the European Union and has backed EU economic sanctions imposed against Moscow over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

    (SD-Agencies)