Jānis Bordāns
Jānis Bordāns is a Latvian politician and lawyer, Minister of Justice of the Republic of Latvia from 2012 to 2014 and since January 2019.
Bordāns served as Minister of Justice in Valdis Dombrovskis' cabinet from July 2012 to January 2014, representing the National Alliance party. He later left the National Alliance and founded the New Conservative Party in May 2014, which he has led since then.
Led by Bordāns, the New Conservative Party won 16 seats in the 2018 Latvian parliamentary election, sharing the second place with another party in a fragmented parliament.
On 7 November 2018, Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis asked Bordāns to form a new coalition government and serve as the next Prime Minister of Latvia. Bordāns intended to form a five-party majority coalition, and he announced that his party would under no circumstances join a government coalition that would also include ZZS, a political alliance led by a Latvian oligarch Aivars Lembergs. Whereas, other political parties believed that a wider coalition that included ZZS would be a better solution. Consequently, Bordāns did not reach an agreement with his potential coalition partners, and informed the President that he is unable to form the cabinet. In the following weeks, the parties agreed to form a coalition without ZZS, but with a compromise prime minister candidate from the smallest political party represented in parliament.
Subsequently, in January 2019, Bordāns took office for a second term as Minister of Justice and the Deputy Prime Minister in the centre-right coalition cabinet of Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš.Education
Bordāns graduated Riga Secondary School 39 in 1985. In 1992, he graduated from the University of Latvia and got a Master of Laws degree.
