The year 2018 will be a unique year. This will be the hundredth year since we have our own and independent country. Freedom is our opportunity as well as our responsibility. Moreover, our achievements will be heard off for many years in the future.
Therefore, I call on everyone not to stay aside.
I call on everyone to use their opportunities whenever you can see them: helping your family and your contemporaries, eliminating injustice or introducing order where no order has existed, caring for and protecting your country.
With everybody engaged, we can accomplish the greatest things, and we can achieve even more when we do them together.
Let us therefore engage, undertake, and participate in decision making at every level. In a free country, everyone has the right to express his or her views and to stand up for the principles that are important to them. Let us use this right with pleasure because that is the true meaning of freedom.
I appeal to use the opportunity when choosing your representatives to the Saeima after ten months and to evaluate them already and throughout the year. Follow the events, their words, and their deeds. Realize your right to hold them accountable and make them explain every decision they have taken! Do not bargain away your vote for empty promises!
When joining the European Union, we said “yes” to the common European values, the greater freedom, and multiple opportunities that it gives. While the world is changing, let us stay ahead of changes and do our best to make the star of Latvia twinkle brightly on the European flag.
The next year really will be a year of celebration. In every town and in every region, we have jointly arranged so many presents on the grand birthday of Latvia. There are so many of them that I would not be able to count them all by the end of this year.
Now, before stepping into the hundredth year of Latvia, I congratulate you once again, and I call on you sincerely- please, do not stay aside, observe, participate, and create Latvia! Let us live and celebrate this year so that each of us can say with even greater pride and confidence: “I am Latvia.”
Happy New Year!