Māris Grīnblats (5 January 1955 – 14 March 2021) was a

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

n politician and a member of the political party

For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK (, abbreviated to TB/LNNK) was a free-market, national conservative political party in Latvia. In 2011, it dissolved and merged into the National Alliance (Latvia), National Alliance. The party was founded from sm ...

(TB/LNNK).

Early life

Grīnblats was born on 5 January 1955 in

Kuldīga Kuldīga () () is a town in the Courland region of Latvia, in the western part of the country. It is the center of Kuldīga Municipality with a population of approximately 13,500. Kuldīga was first mentioned in 1242. It joined the Hanseatic L ...

Latvian SSR The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (Also known as the Latvian SSR, or Latvia) was a Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republic of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1941, and then from 1944 until 1990. The Soviet occupation of the Bal ...

. From 1977 to 1982 he studied and graduated from the LVU Department of Philosophy. From 1980 to 1983, he was a sociologist of various departments of Latvian universities. From 1988 Grīnblats was a member of the

Madona Madona (; ) is a town with town rights in the Vidzeme region of Latvia and is the center of the Madona municipality. History The surrounding area of Madona had been populated in earlier times, which is confirmed by discoveries of old buria ...

branch of the Latvian People's Front (LTF), later he became its chairman. From 1989 to 1990 he was a member of the LTF Council. Grīnblats participated in the development of the Citizens' Congress of the Republic of Latvia, and in 1990 he was elected a delegate of the Citizens' Congress, where he was the Deputy Chairman of the Latvian Committee of the Citizens' Congress. From 1991 to 1993, he was chairman of the Citizens' Congress and a leader of the 18th November Union that emerged from it. He became the founding leader of For Fatherland and Freedom (TB), a party that was created from 18 November Union, in 1993. After the 1995 parliamentary election, Grīnblats, as leader of the centre-right 'National Bloc' coalition formed around TB, was asked to become

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

, but, on 23 November, he failed to get the confidence of the

Saeima The Saeima () is the parliament of the Latvia, Republic of Latvia. It is a unicameral parliament consisting of 100 members who are elected by proportional representation, with seats allocated to political parties which gain at least 5% of the p ...

: falling short by one vote. Instead, he became Minister for Education and Science and a

Deputy Prime Minister A deputy prime minister or vice prime minister is, in some countries, a Minister (government), government minister who can take the position of acting prime minister when the prime minister is temporarily absent. The position is often likened to th ...

Andris Šķēle Andris Šķēle (born 16 January 1958) is a Latvian former politician and business oligarch. He served two terms as Prime Minister of Latvia from 1995 to 1997, and again from 1999 to 2000. Early life Šķēle graduated from the Latvian Agri ...

. During Grīnblats leadership of TB, it merged with Latvian National Independence Movement to form the TB/LNNK, and Grīnblats became the party's first chairman. He remained in that position until 2002, at the beginning of the 8th Saeima, when he became President of the TB/LNNK's faction in the national legislature, the

, which he remained in the 9th Saeima. He ran in the

2010 Latvian parliamentary election Parliamentary elections were held in Latvia on 2 October 2010. It was the first parliamentary election to be held in Latvia since the beginning of the 2008 Latvian financial crisis during which Latvia had experienced one of the deepest recessio ...

as a member of the

National Alliance National Alliance may refer to: Electoral alliances *National Alliance (Egypt) (2015) * National Alliance (Ireland) (2024 onwards) * National Alliance (Pakistan) (2002-2004) *Nation Alliance (Turkey) (2018-2023) Political parties and organizations ...

list, but was not elected. Since then, he was working as a consultant of the party faction in the Saeima. He died in March 2021.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grinblats, Maris 1955 births 2021 deaths People from Kuldīga Latvian independence activists University of Latvia alumni For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK politicians Ministers of education and science of Latvia Deputies of the 5th Saeima Deputies of the 6th Saeima Deputies of the 7th Saeima Deputies of the 8th Saeima Deputies of the 9th Saeima