COUNTRY RE PORT Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V.

LITHUANIA LINAS KOJALA ELISABETH BAUER

March 2016 Lithuania in Focus: History, Cor- ruption and Coming Elections Links www.kas.de/lithuania

In October 2016 national elections will tend to stay at home. Homeland Union-LCD take place in Lithuania. In this report, we also remains stable at around 10 percent, focus on the current state of politics and despite being in opposition. The party’s the topics dominating the public debate in numbers has potential to increase its their early 2016. voters are known to be coming to vote. It is important to note that these polls cover on- The current coalition in the Parliament ly the proportional part of voting, with an- consists of centre-left and populist parties: other 71 single-constituencies depending on Social Democrats (including the Prime Min- regional specifics. It is forecasted that in ister Algirdas Butkevičius), Labour Party case of Social Democrats’ victory in the (Speaker of the Parliament Loreta election, the new ruling coalition could be Graužinienė), and Order and Justice Party. formed on the basis of Social Democrats The coalition was established soon after and Liberal Movement. elections in 2012 and has remained rela- tively stable throughout. The biggest cen- Most popular politicians. Saulius Skver- tre-right party, Homeland Union-Lithuanian nelis, former Police Commissioner General Christian Democrats, is the main opposition and currently Minister of the Interior, is the force (32/141 Members of Parliament), with most popular politician, with an approval former Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius being rating of 60%. He is officially not a member the minority leader of Homeland Union / of any party, though will most probably par- Christian Democrats. The Liberal Movement ticipate in the upcoming elections as a So- is also part of the opposition. cialdemocrat. Skvernelis is followed by Prime Minister A. Butkevičius (55%) and Upcoming Parliament elections long-time leader of the polls President Dalia

Grybauskaitė (52%). Gabrielius Lands- In mid-October 2016, around 2.5 million bergis, the relatively new leader of Home- people will have the right to vote in Parlia- land Union-LCD, remains outside the Top 10 ment (Seimas) election. The Lithuanian par- with an approval rating of 21%. liament is unicameral with 141 members

and a mixed system of election: 71 man- Domestic topics of Discussion dates are distributed via single-seat constit-

uencies, while another 70 members are The ruling coalition faced a series of cor- elected in a nationwide election based on ruption allegations at the start of 2016. proportional representation (lists of political The biggest controversy involved Minister of parties). the Environment K. Trečiokas from Order

and Justice Party, who allegedly used his Opinion polling. The most recent opinion influence to pass a decision in the govern- pollings (February 11-19) show that Social ment which favours the influential mayor of Democrats remain the most popular political Druskininkai town, Socialdemocrat R. Ma- party (23%), with Homeland Union-LCD linauskas. The opposition demands his res- coming second (10%) and Liberal Move- ignation, though the Minister of the Envi- ment in third position (8.7%). Other parties ronment says he will stay and has support likely to pass the 5% threshold are the fol- from the Prime Minister. Furthermore, a lowing: Order and Justice (7.4%), Greens couple of weeks ago the Minister of Health and Peasants (7.1%) and Labour party R. Šalaševičiūtė resigned after publicly ad- (6.8%). Political analysts note that the lead mitting she had paid a bribe to a doctor a of Social Democrats remains stable, so they decade ago. are the favourites in the upcoming election,

though the actual percentage may be slight- ly lower due to the fact that their voters

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Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. The biggest corruption scandal involved prominent poets of the independence Rolandas Paksas, former president of Lithu- movement.

ania, who was impeached in 2004 and is LITHUANIA currently both the leader of Order and Jus- Foreign policy topics of discussion LINAS KOJALA tice Party and a member of the European ELISABETH BAUER Parliament. He was recently questioned by Defence and Security. In January, RAND the Special Investigation Service of Lithua- published an analysis, which concluded that NATO has limited practical capabilities of March 2016 nia. Investigators also questioned Gedvydas Vainauskas, a media magnate who owns the defending the Baltic States in case of mili-

biggest daily Lietuvos rytas, as well as TV tary intervention. It contributed to the secu- Links channel and website of the same name. rity debate amidst Russian assertiveness in www.kas.de/lithuania They both have a “special witness” status in the region. Political leaders of Lithuania in- Lithuania, similar to the “person of interest” sist that NATO should station more troops in designation in Western countries, because the Baltic States to act as deterrence. It is of their alleged involvement in a corruption one of the key topics in the upcoming NATO case. It is believed that Vainauskas may Warsaw Summit. Opinion polls show that

have attempted to bribe Paksas by asking 82% of Lithuanians would support more him to press members of his party in charge NATO troops in the country, while NATO‘s of the Ministry of the Environment to expe- approval stands at 81%. dite permits needed to open a new super- Another opinion poll showed Lithuanians fa- market in Prienai. However, these factors voured enhanced bilateral cooperation do not seem to have big influence on par- with Germany (61%), Poland (61%) and ties’ ratings. Latvia (60%). Ukraine remains an important topic in pub- Education trade unions began a large- lic discussions, though it has lost its mo- scale strike on February, demanding the mentum in media. The discussion focuses government to increase salaries of teachers on security in Eastern Ukraine, economic and implement reforms. Up to 10 percent of support for Kiev, as well as structural re- all schools in Lithuania went on strike, with forms in Ukraine, especially with regard to classes being cancelled for a couple of days. the former Minister of the Economy Aivaras After lengthy negotiations, trade unions and Abromavičius who is Lithuanian. Most of the government reached a preliminary Lithuanians support extending sanctions on agreement to increase the budget for edu- Russia. cation by 8 million euros, though trade un- ions asked for twice the amount. An aver- Migration crisis in Europe is a notable age salary of a teacher in Lithuania at the topic in the media, though in most cases it seems to be observed in Lithuania from moment amounts to 830 euros, though an outsider’s perspective. The European Un- many of the teachers are able to work only part-time due to changing demographics. ion is seen as being unable to tackle the problem because of diverging opinions and Most recently two publications trig- interests. Up to now, only one family has gered a wide public debate. The first come to Lithuania as a part of quota distri- book, called “Our People” by Rūta Vana- bution in the EU. State institutions admit gaitė, dealt with a topic of the Holocaust that it is hard to find refugees who would in Lithuania. Consisting mainly of inter- voluntarily choose to travel to Central Eu- views with witnesses, it described atrocities rope, rather than richer Western or Scandi- perpetrated by Lithuanians against Jews navian countries. Only around 35% of Lith- during World War Two. While many admit- uanians say that the country needs to help ted the book sheds a new light on the much refugees more. needed debate about what happened in Lithuania during the war, critics maintained that it is not entirely accurate. The other book, “Atheism as a Personal Choice in Soviet Lithuania” by Nerija Putinaitė, analyses various aspects of social and cul- tural life in Lithuania during Soviet occupa- tion. It caused a stir because of critical per- ception of poet Justinas Marcinkevičius, who is discussed in the book as a person who was an integral and active part of the Soviet system for many years, though a lot of Lithuanians regard him as one of the most