Liepaja municipal police harass Saeima candidate

Municipal police in Liepāja, a port city in Western Latvia harassed and detained Ansis Dobelis, a candidate for the Latvian parliament, the Saeima, in the September 17 national elections because he was approaching people on the street. Dobelis, a candidate from the centrist Unity (Vienotība) party reported the incident in his Latvian-language blog http://dobelis.lv/2011/09/policejiska-liepaja/.
In the blog post, Dobelis writes that he decided to walk around in Liepāja and personally approach city dwellers to talk about his candidacy. This is exactly how candidates campaign -- "pressing flesh" (shaking hands) and talking one-on-one with citizens -- in free, civilized societies. Liepāja and, perhaps, Latvia as a whole, is apparently not, nor will soon be, a free and civilized society.
Dobelis was detained by the Liepāja municipal police, questioned, photographed and had some kind of document prepared, but not shown to him, concerning his actions. The police said he was violating a city ordinance about posting political bills and holding campaign meetings in the town center. While there can be considerations of esthetics (posting placards on municipal or third-party property) and public order -- holding large rallies, etc., this kind of ordinance, appears, on its face, to be a violation of fundamental rights of free speech and assembly. It is even more offensive when used to attack the basic democratic process of election campaigning.
Unfortunately, a climate of hostility toward public political displays is partially fed by public discussions of the alleged necessity of forbidding most, if not all paid political campaigning, of drastically restricting forms of expression by candidates and reducing the race for the national parliament to a 19th century level of meeting hall gatherings with no coverage by electronic media and draconian controls the print media. While no one has actually called for anything that extreme, certain imprecise formulations of the need to limit campaign spending and contributions can have a chilling effect on expression and media contacts by candidates, and "heating up" effect on those looking for any excuse to repress free expression. 

Latvian police see no violation in campaigning by two political candidates

The Latvian National Police see no violations of any laws in campaigning activities by two candidates of the  Vienotība (Unity) alliance who had confrontations with security guards by the Riga Central Station and the Central Market, according to press reports.
Rasma Kārkliņa, a German born Latvian political scientist who worked extensively in the US, was told by security guards hired by the Norwegian-owned Linstow property management company to stop. Police were summoned after Kārkliņa objected and she went to a police station to make a statement.
Lolita Čigāne, another Vienotība candidate, was campaigning in the largely open-air Central Market where she got into a confrontation with security guards and firmly stood on her constitutional right to free speech,
A spokesperson for Linstow, which has stewardship over the public areas by the Central Station, where it manages the Origo shopping center, which is integrated with the train station, said that Kārkliņa should have obtained approval to campaign by signing an agreement with the company. However, such contracts apparently apply to semipermanent campaigning facilities, such as tents, sheds, or stand-alone signs (such as a large one erected to promote the candidacy of Ainars Šlesers, once associated with Linstow and Norwegian retailing interests). As Kārklinā said in an updated statement, she is "neither a tent nor a large banner".  The law cited by the Linstow spokesperson also speaks of "public institutions", which means there should be no political campaigning in closed spaces, such as municipal offices, police stations, City Hall and the like.
A reasonable approach would be to treat peaceful, free speech and assembly as a nearly inviolable right in all areas that are functionally public spaces (that is, open to all and generally allowing both transit by the public and the peaceful presence of members of the public). This means that the stewardship the Linstow can exercise over this area by contract or other legal right should be limited to strictly technical matters (cleaning and safety issues) and, to some extent, the placement of semi-permanent structures in the area, as well as some scheduling issues (hard to have two public gatherings in the same place at once).
What Linstow has chosen to do, instead, is to aggressively assert what amount to maximum property rights(like those of a private home, office and, to some extent, the enclosed areas of the Origo shopping facility) and the ability to dictate limits on the speech and behavior of persons in an area that is for all intents and purposes.
It may be a bit far-fetched to say that Linstow is acting on behalf of Šlesers, who helped set them up in Riga when he was a private businessman in the 1990s, it can be claimed on indisputable fact that the company has acted as a defacto private political police. Personally, I don't blame this so much on the Norwegians, who have always been Scandinavian-style democrats, but on the local Latvian mentality, to forbid and intimidate first, then ask questions about free speech and political rights later, when forced by a public scandal to do so. Unfortunately, the authoritarian reflex and the authoritarian personality are very much alive in Latvian political and corporate culture. In Norway, the spirit of the authoritarian Vidkun Quisling is dead, but in Latvia, the mentality of the distant authoritarian past, and of the not-so-distant totalitarian times, is still with us.