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Lithuania

Grybauskaitė headed for easy reelection as Lithuania’s president

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Though the disputed independence referenda in Ukraine’s troubled eastern oblasts attracted considerably more international attention, Lithuania also went to the polls on May 11 to elect a president.Lithuania Flag Icon

Dalia Grybauskaitė, the incumbent since 2009, easily led the first round with 46.61% of the vote, just shy of an outright victory, and she is almost certain to win reelection in the May 25 runoff against Zigmantas Balčytis, a member of the European Parliament, a former finance minister and, briefly for a month in 2006, acting prime minster. Balčytis is the candidate of the governing center-left Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania).

The runoff will coincide with elections for the European Parliament, where Lithuania holds 11 of its 751 seats.

Balčytis, a relatively uncharismatic candidate, won just 13.84% of the vote, however, only narrowly edging out Artūras Paulauskas, the candidate of the Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party), who 12.20%.

Grybauskaitė, who lists the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher among her political heroes, has been dubbed, somewhat unimaginatively, as Lithuania’s ‘Iron Lady,’ after amassing one of the most prolific political careers of any figure in post-Soviet Lithuania. A former finance official, Grybauskaitė served as Lithuania’s representative to the European Commission between 2004 and 2009, for much of that time as the commissioner for financial planning and the budget. As commissioner, Grybauskaitė worked to reduce agricultural subsidies from the European budget and she was responsible for passing the first such budget that held funding for the Common Agricultural Policy to below 50% of European funds for the first time in European Union history.

Upon returning to Lithuania, she easily won a first-round election running as a conservative independent against token opposition. Though Lithuania’s parliamentary government means that the prime minister is responsible for most of Lithuanian domestic policy,  Grybauskaitė holds a key role in setting foreign policy. She has championed Lithuania’s place in the heart of the European Union, the eurozone and in NATO, and she has fiercely resisted Russian designs on influencing its ‘near-abroad,’ especially during the most recent security crisis over the Russian annexation of Crimea and possible designs to influence eastern Ukraine.   Continue reading Grybauskaitė headed for easy reelection as Lithuania’s president →

Lithuania

Lithuania’s president throws post-election coalition talks into disarray

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Lithuanian’s highly respected president, Dalia Grybauskaitė, has upended what everyone thought would be a broad leftist coalition following the second and final round of Lithuanian parliamentary elections on Sunday.

Following a victory by the social democratic Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania), which won 38 seats after the first round on October 14 and October 28, it seemed likely that the Social Democrats would form the next government, a coalition headed by Social Democratic leader and former finance minister Algirdas Butkevičius.

It had always been expected that Butkevičius would lead a broad center-left coalition with the support of the more populist Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party), led by Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich, which won 19.95% of the first-round vote on October 14 to just 18.46% for the Social Democrats and 14.90% for outgoing prime minister Andrius Kubilius’s center-right Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats).

That October 14 vote determined the 70 seats allocated to Lithuania’s parliament, the Seimas, by proportional representation.  The remaining 71 seats were determined by single-member district votes, many of which were determined in the runoff votes held last Sunday, after which the Social Democrats emerged as the largest force, followed closely by Homeland Union with 33 seats and Labour with 29.

Indeed, the Social Democrats, Labour and a third party — Tvarka ir teisingumas (TT, Order and Justice) — had agreed an electoral pact to form a government.  Together, the three parties would command an absolute majority of 79 seats.  So the outcome seemed more or less a fait accompli.

Until Monday, when Grybauskaitė intervened, arguing that Labour is, essentially, unfit for government, and pledging not to nominate a prime minister who will govern with Labour support:

…Grybauskaite said she refused to back a coalition which included Labor, which stands accused of buying votes during the two rounds of voting.

“A party which is suspected of gross violations in the election, which is suspected of false accounting and non-transparent activities cannot participate in the government’s formation,” the president told reporters.

She said police were investigating 27 election irregularities, 18 of which concerned alleged vote buying, with the Labor Party accused of involvement in most of them.

Grybauskaitė, a political independent, is a highly-respected former European Commission for Financial Programming and the Budget from 2004 to 2009.  In the May 2009 presidential election, she became Lithuania’s first head of state by winning a whopping 69.1% victory, with her closest rival Butkevičius at 11.8% support.

On Wednesday, however, the three parties invited a fourth party, the Lietuvos lenkų rinkimų akcija (AWPL, Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania; Akcja Wyborcza Polaków na Litwie in Polish), a Christian democratic party devoted to ethnic Polish issues, into their coalition talks, which would give it 87 seats — more than the 85-vote majority it would need to override a presidential veto.  So it’s unclear that Butkevičius and his electoral allies are willing to back down, potentially setting up a constitutional showdown with Grybauskaitė, who is Lithuania’s most popular public figure by far. Continue reading Lithuania’s president throws post-election coalition talks into disarray →

Lithuania

Lithuanian Social Democrats in place to run next government

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So we have the results of Lithuania’s full two rounds of elections: the Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) have won the greatest number of seats in the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, following a runoff election yesterday.

Although 70 seats are determined by proportional representation on the basis of the first-round vote on October 14, the LSDP won a disproportionately high number of the 71 seats in the Seimas that are determined in single-member districts.

In the first round of the election, the more populist Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party), led by Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich, won 19.96% of the vote, while the Social Democrats won just 18.45% and the governing Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats) of outgoing prime minister Andrius Kubilius won 14.93%.

For lots of reasons, this scared the rest of Europe.  Uspaskich, under investigation a few years ago for corruption, actually hid out in Russia, so a Uspaskich-headed government would be a nightmare for Europe, given that Lithuania’s already not just a European Union member, but a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But by the end of the second round, the Social Democrats took 23 of the 71 single-district seats — Homeland Union won just 20, and Labour won just 12 — much like in past Lithuanian elections, Labour had a stronger result from the proportional results than from the direct-election results.

The result, which will give the Social Democrats the largest bloc of seats in the Seimas, makes it all but certain that the leader of the Social Democrats, Algirdas Butkevičius (pictured above, bottom), a former finance minister, will become Lithuania’s next prime minister.  Furthermore, although he’s signed an electoral pact with Uspaskich’s Labour Party and Tvarka ir teisingumas (TT, Order and Justice), a shape-shifting  populist party led by former president Rolandas Paksas, who was impeached for corruption in 2004, the result will give Butkevičius a boost vis-a-vis even his coalition partners.

So Europe, which was wary of a Uspaskich-dominated government (even if Labour ultimately won more seats than the Social Democrats, will be a little more relaxed following Sunday’s runoff vote — although it was always thought that Butkevičius would nonetheless become prime minister, his position will be much stronger than Uspaskich’s, or any of the more nefarious characters of Lithuanian politics, with the Social Democrats having won the clearest plurality of parliamentary seats.

Kubilius, who had a difficult hand to play after the past four years in government, duly trimmed the Lithuanian budget after the financial crisis of 2008-09 saw Lithuania’s GDP plummet by 15%.  Indeed, the Lithuanian election result, in both rounds, was much better for Kubilius’s Homeland Union than polls had suggested, indicating that Kubilius received more credit than expected from a Lithuanian electorate that’s nonetheless weary of austerity, economic stagnation and unemployment.

Although Butkevičius won’t likely be able to effect a 180-degree change in Lithuanian policy, he has championed the introduction of a progressive income tax and minimum salaries.  Furthermore, although he’s been less enthusiastic (along with much of eastern Europe) about his country’s accession into the eurozone, European leaders seem much likelier to be happy with a pro-European center-left prime minister like Butkevičius than either Uspaskich or Paksas.

So ultimately, on a day when Ukraine seemed to fall further backwards on democracy and the rule of law, Lithuania seems to have marked another peaceful transfer of government within the broad tradition of European political norms.

Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine

Red October? Four autumn elections boost Moscow’s influence in Russian ‘near-abroad’

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It’s been a good October for Moscow.

In each of the four former Soviet republics with elections scheduled for late September and October 2012 (Belarus, Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine), Russia has reason to believe that its relations with each such country will strengthen.  The elections have ranged in character from incredibly free, open and fair to completely rigged, and the countries fall across the spectrum of geography, economics and political development.

The one factor they have in common is the success of political leaders who aim to nudge their country’s foreign relations some degree friendlier with Russia:

  • In Belarus on September 23, Alexander Lukashenko and his allies ‘won’ all of the seats in the House of Representatives in an unfair and unfree election.  Lukashenko, in power since 1994, is one of the most pro-Russian leaders among former Soviet republics; Belarus and Russia share very tight-knit economic ties, a common approach to rule of law and human rights (not particularly progressive), and Lukashenko has at various times contemplated bringing Belarus and Russia back into some form of union.  Belarus and Kazakhstan, for instance, joined a formal customs union with Russia in January 2012.
  • In Georgia on October 1, an opposition coalition led by Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili took control of the Georgian parliament from the party of Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili.  Ivanishvili, an oligarch who made his fortune in the 1990s and 2000s in post-Soviet Russia, has argued that Georgia can remain committed to economic and democratic reforms and the rule of law and strive for better relations with Russia (though Ivanishvili says he’d still like to seek Georgian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).  Under Saakashvili, Russia imposed a trade ban on many Georgian exports, including wine, agricultural products and mineral water; in 2008, after provocation from Saakashvili, Russian president Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops to the breakway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which remain occupied by Russian forces.
  • In Lithuania on October 14, in the first round of parliamentary elections, the Labour Party of Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich narrowly won the largest share of the vote and will likely form part of the next government coalition.  Uspaskich’s party also finished first in 2004, but since then, Uspaskich has been charged with corruption and spent parts of 2006 and 2007 in apparent hiding in Russia.  In any event, Uspaskich’s presence in the government could bring about more favorable relations with Russia, and it could possibly slow Lithuanian accession into the eurozone.
  • In Ukraine on October 28, pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who narrowly defeated the more pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko in the 2010 election (who was promptly charged, tried and imprisoned on politically motivated charges relating to the 2009 pipeline crisis with Russia) is leading his largely united pro-Russian Party of Regions in parliamentary elections, while the various pro-Western political parties remain split.

This autumn’s elections follow the September 2011 Latvian parliamentary elections, in which the Harmony Centre party won the largest share of the vote, a watershed for a party that derives much of its support from ethnic Russians and which actually signed an electoral pact with Putin’s ‘United Russia’ party in 2009.  The result caused alarm in Washington and Brussels — Latvia joined NATO in 2004 along with Lithuania and Estonia, so a pro-Putin government in a NATO government would naturally be alarming.  But despite some legitimate doubts about Harmony Centre, its anti-austerity platform attracted even not just ethnic Russians, but ethnic Latvians, and it seems more interested in elevating Russian as an official language in Latvia (one-fourth of Latvia’s population speaks Russian) than reconstituting a political union with Russia. In any event, other Latvian parties united to keep Harmony Centre out of the government.

Although some Western media have already started pearl-clutching about this month’s elections, it’s important to keep some perspective — it’s not exactly the second coming of the Warsaw Pact.

Putin, in 2011 as Russian prime minister, proposed a ‘Eurasian Union,’ although it’s unclear whether that has any chance of succeeding — the Commonwealth of Independent States, which incorporates nine of the 15 former Soviet republics, has not exactly prospered (and ask former French president Nicolas Sarkozy how his proposed ‘Mediterranean Union’ is doing).  In recent years, Russia has reduced energy subsidies to Ukraine and Belarus, despite clearly pro-Putin governments, and it took a curiously lackadaisical approach to the 2010 coup in Kyrgyzstan.  Except for perhaps Belarus, none of the Soviet republics seem to have the stomach to return to a ‘Soviet Union light’ alliance with Russia.

Rather, there’s a more pragmatic realization in the former Soviet republics that even if Russia isn’t quite the superpower that it was in the 20th century, the inevitability of geography suggests that it will continue to exert some influence, for good or for ill, in its ‘near-abroad’ — in terms of economics, energy, security, and in some cases, continued cultural and political ties.  As the Cold War recedes further into history, though, it’s becoming less necessary to think of having to choose between ‘the West’ and Russia as a binary matter.  If former Soviet republics overlearned the lessons of 1990 and 1991, perhaps they are now learning the countervailing lessons of Saakashvili’s mistakes — needlessly antagonizing Russia (not to mention ethnic Russians within former Soviet republics) is probably counterproductive, even for more pro-reform, pro-Western leaders.

Continue reading Red October? Four autumn elections boost Moscow’s influence in Russian ‘near-abroad’ →

Lithuania

Lithuania election results

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We have the first-round preliminary election results from Lithuania, and it confirms what was previously reported, and roughly what polls had shown in the lead-up to the parliamentary elections: the two major leftist/populist opposition parties have won the most seats, likely ending the four-year government of center-right prime minister Andrius Kubilius, who ushered in an era of budget austerity following the financial crisis of 2008-09 that saw Lithuania’s GDP plummet by 15%.

The populist Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party), led by Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich, won 19.96% of the vote yesterday, and the more traditionally center-left Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) won 18.45%.

Kubilius’s own party, the Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats) won 14.93%, a bit higher than polls had predicted in advance of the vote.

Sunday’s vote was the first of a two-round process: 70 seats in Lithuania’s unicameral parliament, the Seimas, were alloted by proportional representation.  An addition 71 seats will be determined by single-member individual districts, many of which will be determined in a runoff vote, to be held October 28.  On the basis of Sunday’s vote, Labour will have won 17 seats, the Social Democrats 16 seats and Homeland Union 12 seats.

The Social Democrats and Labour are expected to win sufficient seats between yesterday and the individual district runoffs to form a government with another smaller party, Tvarka ir teisingumas (TT, Order and Justice).  In the 2004 and 2008 elections, the Social Democrats have typically done as well or better in the individual districts than in the proportional vote; Labour, however, has typically done either as well or worse.  So it’s still quite possible that the Social Democrats will emerge with a greater number of seats than Labour, notwithstanding Labour’s narrow victory on Sunday.

Regardless of whether Labour or the Social Democrats technically win more seats, it is expected that the leader of the Social Democrats, Algirdas Butkevičius, a former finance minister, will serve as the new prime minister.  In 2004, when Labour emerged as the largest party in the Seimas (then also under Uspaskich’s leadership), it allowed a Social Democrat to be prime minister.  Since then, Uspaskich has been embroiled in a corruption scandal over his party’s finances, and Uspaskich himself spent parts of 2006 and 2007 apparently in hiding in Russia.

So it’s a safe bet that the international community (especially the United States, the rest of the European Union and the bondholders who are pricing Lithuanian debt) would prefer a Butkevičius-led government, not a Uspaskich-led one — and Lithuania’s new governing coalition seems sure to recognize that.  The success of Uspaskich’s party alone, and his influence on the next Lithuanian government, will itself be enough to delay a potential Lithuanian accession into the eurozone as well as cause some alarm with regard to a potentially more pro-Russia foreign policy from the Lithuanian government.  A government led by Uspaskich could potentially bring Lithuania back into economic crisis and put it at odds with the rest of Europe. Continue reading Lithuania election results →

Lithuania

Meet the new power threesome of Lithuania: Algirdas Butkevičius, Viktor Uspaskich and Rolandas Paksas

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Lithuanians are voting today to select new members of the Seimas, the country’s 141-seat unicameral legislature.

After four years of budget-crushing austerity and slow economic recovery under Andrius Kubilius, the longtime leader of Lithuania’s center-right Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats) appears headed for defeat.

Under the two-round parallel voting system, voters choose 70 seats by proportional representation (all of which will be determined today) and 71 seats directly in individual districts (many of which will proceed to a second round on October 28).  After today, though, we should have a good idea of who will win the largest number of seats.

Throughout much of the campaign, the longtime center-left Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) looked set to emerge as the largest party.  But the most recent poll shows that it’s essentially tied with the more populist Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party).

An October 10 poll showed the Social Democrats with 16.9% of the vote to just 15.8% for Labour.  Both parties have joined an electoral pact, along with a third party, Tvarka ir teisingumas (TT, Order and Justice), which garnered 8.2% in the poll.  Homeland Union won just 7.6%.  The socially and free-market liberal Liberalų Sąjūdis (LRLS, Liberal Movement) won 5.8% — the only other party to garner over 5%, the threshold for a party to enter the Seimas on the proportional representation vote.

It seems certain that the two most important individuals to drive Lithuanian policy over the next four years (the Seimas has a fixed term) will be the leader of the Social Democrats, Algirdas Butkevičius (pictured above, right), who will likely become prime minister, and the leader of the Labour Party, Viktor Uspaskich (pictured above, left).  The third party in the electoral pact, Order and Justice, is essentially a personality-driven vehicle for its leader, Rolandas Paksas (pictured above, center), and it has veered both left and right.

Butkevičius and his allies have promised to relax some of the budget austerity that has brought Lithuania’s deficit down from nearly 10% of GDP to near the European Union cap of 3%.  That has caused some concern among bondholders and EU leaders, who have largely applauded Kubilius’s government and rewarded Lithuania with relatively low bond rates.  After a nearly disastrous 2008-09, when Lithuania’s economy collapsed by nearly 15%, GDP growth has now largely returned to Lithuania — 6% growth in 2011.  Although the Baltics have largely been held up as showcase examples for budget austerity (despite the protestations of Paul Krugman), unemployment remains staggeringly high at nearly 13%, and both Butkevičius and Uspaskich have said their chief priority will be creating jobs.

Although Lithuania is not hampered by the terms of any EU-based or International Monetary Fund loans, its government has been nudging the country toward adopting the euro, which necessitates getting Lithuania’s budget deficit within 3% of GDP, among other financial benchmarks.

Butkevičius, throughout the campaign, has called for the introduction of a progressive income tax and minimum salaries, and he’s also questioned the rapid accession of Lithuania into the eurozone.  But it’s difficult to know where the bluster ends and real policy changes would begin.  Butkevičius, a former finance minister in the Social Democrat-led government from 2004 to 2008, has already started to back away from some of his more populist stances.

Throughout Europe this year, we’ve seen anti-austerity candidates win elections on the strength of ‘pro-growth’ policies, only to realize in office that financial constraints restrict their maneuverability.  We’ve seen this in Greece, in France (where president François Hollande’s popularity is already sinking) and in the Netherlands (where the anti-austerity Labour Party looks set to join a coalition with budget-cutting prime minister Mark Rutte).

It’s doubtful that tiny Lithuania would be the exception — so a Butkevičius-led government would probably run into many of the same constraining dynamics.

But in addition to the populist rhetoric, there’s more cause for worry — from the two individuals that Butkevičius will likely join in his coalition. Continue reading Meet the new power threesome of Lithuania: Algirdas Butkevičius, Viktor Uspaskich and Rolandas Paksas →

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Lithuanian left closes in on victory in advance of Oct. 14 parliamentary elections

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It’s a great autumn for post-Soviet elections — not less than a month after a less-than-fair Belarusian election and after an upset in parliamentary elections in Georgia, and with Ukrainian elections set for the end of the month, another former Soviet republic is set to go to the polls in just two weeks — Lithuania, the largest and most populous of the three Baltic states.

In nearly every election since 1992, Lithuanians have see-sawed every four years between more right-wing and left-wing parties.  So after a more left-wing coalition governed from 2004 to 2008, Andrius Kubilius (pictured above with, heh, Santa Claus), who previously served as prime minister from 1999 to 2000, returned as prime minister as the leader of Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats).

And now, as the first round of this month’s elections approach on October 14, both of Lithuania’s two largest left-wing parties look set to return to power, with promises to end the current government’s austerity measures in order to focus on unemployment.

Lithuania’s Seimas, (in full, the Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, or the Lithuanian National Parliament) is the Baltic nation’s 141-member unicameral legislature.  Members are elected for a set four-year term — 71 of the seats are elected in individual districts, whereas the remaining 70 seats are elected under proportional representation.  The threshold is 5% of the national vote for a single party and 7% for a multi-party coalition running together on the same slate.  The strict proportional representation members will be elected on October 14, while voting in individual districts will take place on October 14 and October 28 (in the event of a runoff between the top two candidates — in order to avoid a runoff, a candidate must win (i) an absolute majority with a turnout of over 40% or (ii) an absolute majority representing at least 20% of the registered voters in the constituency).

Even under the relatively high proportional representation standards for election to the Seimas, Lithuania has a fairly high number of parties, but two parties in particular seem to dominate Lithuanian politics: Homeland Union and the Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania).  The Social Democrats were the largest party in the coalition that emerged after the 2004 election, and look set to return in that role. Continue reading Lithuanian left closes in on victory in advance of Oct. 14 parliamentary elections →