Jailed Latvian May Be Election Victor

This Baltic nation’s former Communist Party boss, now in jail awaiting trial for treason, apparently won a seat in Parliament in Latvia’s first elections since independence, preliminary results showed Monday.

The overall victors in the weekend voting were pro-reform parties, which appeared to have captured enough seats to form a coalition government and push ahead with free-market reforms.

But some observers predicted Monday that reform efforts could bog down again in the dispute over which non-ethnic Latvians should be granted citizenship in the former Soviet republic.

Alfred Rubiks, the imprisoned Communist chief, drew support mainly from Russian, Belarussian and Ukrainian residents of Latvia who are angry about what they consider ethnic discrimination.

It is unclear whether Rubiks will be allowed to take his seat. He is scheduled to go on trial next week for supporting the failed August, 1991, hard-line coup in Moscow.

About one-third of Latvia’s 1.8 million adults were ineligible to vote because citizenship so far has been granted only to people who can trace their ancestry to pre-1940 residents.

That has excluded most Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians, who moved to Latvia in large numbers after it was occupied by Soviet troops at the start of World War II.