MAYBE IT WAS A DREAM

After the world media have enjoyed a smorgasbord of scandal at Latvia's table and expense, this week the Prosecutor General's Office declared no case in child abuse allegations against three of Latvia's former top officials.

Witnesses against former Prime Minister Andris Skele, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Valdis Birkavs and state Revenue Service director Andrejs Sonciks were paid to drop the officials' names in all the wrong places. The young "witnesses" are hiding outside Latvia's borders while prosecutors decide the benefits pro and con of criminal charges against the alleged bandleader of the affair, MP Janis Adamsons.

The whole affair must be more embarrassing to Latvians than it is to outsiders with an affection for Latvia, to whom the antics are embarrassing enough. Why didn't those involved have the decency and guts to go mano a mano, roll up their sleeves and duke it out directly over power and privatization instead of making the whole country, its media and its political system look like a monkey preserve on double grog rations? For several months, the international media called this newspaper to get fast fixes or find an "arranger" to put them in touch with the right people for a one-night stand news visit. Predictably the reporters would write reports that in most cases showed a thin understanding of "names 'linked' with pedophile investigation" compared to actual evidence-backed charges. What a sorry spectacle.

Let's hope we have learned something about the separation of the power of Parliament to make laws and the power of the judiciary to interpret them without "special" committees of "special" folks with "special" powers to subvert and muddle this separation to their own greedy intents.

As for MP Adamsons, a criminal investigation is underway. The General Prosecutor's Office has to determine if Adamsons knew the "evidence" was false and the accusations untrue when he made them in Parliament on Feb. 17, coincidentally the day that Riga was loaded with Western press scooping up the proceeds of an international meeting on the prosecution of war criminals from Latvia's toxic history during the Holocaust.

True or untrue? Some of the lads got five lats for telling Adamson's adhoc prosecuting committee (not the real one) their sad tales. Not to diminish the problem of child abuse in any society, but in this case, were the allegations true, mostly true, or conjured up, as found by the General Prosecutor's Office (the real one)?

Mmmmmmmm. Gee, those are difficult questions. What do you think?