I'm sitting at the conference on the government integrity organised by Delna (local Transparency International branch). What I'm hearing here, just adds to my impression, that we as a society have done well. Despite being very critical about ourselves, there has been a tremendous progress regarding independence of the courts, fight against corruption, state building. Latvia in 2012 is  a well functioning democracy. Yet we could do even better- there is still some way to go institution-wise, but it seems we're geting there. Democratic values - it takes more time, but I'm optimistic about our prospects.