The head of Lithuania's ruling party feels they've won all three of this year's elections, despite finishing behind two opposition parties. He had previously indicated the party would pull out of government in case of electoral defeats.
“The EP elections are over. We have a newly-elected president and, together with him, we will look for solutions to make people's lives better,” Ramūnas Karbauskis, the leader of the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVŽS) told journalists on Tuesday.
“I'm happy that we have a new president whose vision of the future of the state is the same as ours,” he said.
When asked which of the elections – municipal, presidential or to the European Parliament – the Farmers and Greens' have won, Karbauskis said, “All three of them”.
Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, the ruling party's presidential candidate, did not advance to the presidential runoff after finishing third in the first round of voting.
The Farmers and Greens had initially criticized Gitanas Nausėda as “a candidate of the conservatives”, but backed him in the runoff.
The LVŽS came third in the EP election, behind the conservative Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democrats and the Social Democratic Party, but secured one additional seat in the EP, where the party will have two delegates.
Karbauskis said on the election night that he was not satisfied with the result.
“We'll have to come together and decide what to do next, because the result is not satisfactory. We'll decide on our next steps,” he told journalists at the party's election campaign headquarters. “The leader of any party wants to win an election. If we failed, that means we made a mistake.”
