Arnolds Babris and Jānis Pļaviņš expressed their criticism using similar terms to ones voiced by activists during a 11. novembra krastmala protest on 12 December this year about government COVID-19 restrictions and insufficient public dialogue with participation of top government officials and experts in immunology and epidemiology on various methods for stopping the COVID-19 pandemic.
Interests of the general public are at the heart of decisions taken by the Latvian government, stressed the Head of the Chancery Andris Teikmanis. These decisions are driven by recommendations of renowned and highly-qualified health experts with significant public support and also guidelines issued by the best international scientific institutions like the Robert Koch Institute. ‘Latvia is not the only country, which has imposed COVID-19 restrictions to contain the pandemic. Upon recommendations from experts and scientific institutions, governments all over the world have imposed social-distancing rules, cancelled public events and adopted other hygiene and safety guidelines to help stop the community spread of COVID-19. Governments of democratic countries must be ready to face the criticism of their decisions,’ said Andris Teikmanis.
Head of the Chancery also added that ‘everyone who lives in Latvia has the freedom of speech, including freedom of expression. However, freedom of expression should not threaten the public interests, for example, by using it to intentionally mislead the general public. This is what the President of Latvia firmly believes and would like to remind everyone: disinformation and misinformation with intent of misleading the public is a serious threat to democracy and it should be efficiently prevented’.