Guntis Ulmanis was born in Riga on September 13, 1939. His grandfather was the brother of the Latvian leader Kārlis Ulmanis. In 1941, Guntis Ulmanis and his family were exiled to Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, Russian SFSR. In 1946, he came back to Latvia, but his family was not allowed to settle in Riga and so they stayed at Ēdole in the Kuldīga area of the Latvian SSR. In 1949, the remainder of the Ulmanis family was supposed to be exiled again, but Guntis Ulmanis was able to avoid that fate, as his mother remarried and his surname was changed to Rumpītis. They then moved to Jūrmala, where he went to school. After graduating, he entered the economic faculty of the Latvian State University.
As President, Guntis Ulmanis focused on foreign policy, building relations with international and regional organizations, as well as other countries. A major achievement was the conclusion of the Latvian-Russian treaty on the withdrawal of Russian Armed Forces from Latvia. During his presidency, Latvia joined the Council of Europe and sent its application to the European Union. He announced a moratorium on the death penalty, in accordance with the norms of the European Council. In 1996, he was re-elected in the first round of elections, defeating Saeima speaker Ilga Kreituse, Imants Liepa and former Communist Party chairmanAlfrēds Rubiks, who was in jail at the time. In 1998 President Ulmanis actively supported amendments to the Citizenship law, that would allow all people born after August 21, 1991, to obtain citizenship and would eliminate so-called "naturalization limits". However, he was forced to send the law project on a referendum, after 36 nationalistic deputies, opposed to the amendment petitioned him to do so. He then actively and successfully campaigned for the adoption of the amendments by the population.
Retirement and subsequent return to politics
Guntis Ulmanis' term finished in 1999 and he was succeeded by Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. He retired from politics but became a social activist, founding the Guntis Ulmanis Fund, organizing the 2006 IIHF World Championship in Riga and heading the Riga Castle reconstruction council. 2010 marked a return to big politics for Guntis Ulmanis. He became the chairman of the newly created party alliance For a Good Latvia, which was composed of the People's Party and Latvia's First Party/Latvian Way. The alliance won only 8 seats in the October 2010 parliamentary election. However, Ulmanis became a Saeima deputy. In 2011 he announced he did not want to run for another term as a deputy in the 2011 election. He, therefore, ceased being a deputy in November 2011, after the 11th Saeima was inaugurated.
