Where can you find a beaver, a stork and a swallow in one place? In the Lithuanian parliament, apparently, since these are the mascots of political parties.
The Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, currently the biggest party in the Seimas, sports a stork in its logo. The leader says that the party picked a mascot that they thought represented their ideas and values.
“We picked a symbol that could be a character,” according to MP Ramūnas Karbauskis. During party events, he says, people dressed in stork costumes make children happy.
A swallow represents the conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats. The party's logo contains the outline of the bird in a heart-shaped frame. Party leader Gabrielius Landsbergis says that the swallow represents the Homeland Union wing of the party and the heart stands for the Christian Democrats.
Swallow is a herald of spring, he says, and refers to the origins of the conservative party which emerged from the independence movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the “springtime of our state”.
And now the two birds have been joined by a beaver. The rodent is the mascot of the Social Democratic Labour Party, a new group that came about after a group of MPs split off from the Social Democratic Party (whose own logo is a red rose) in 2018.
At the time, the splintered MPs were called, dismissively, “beavers”, but now the party decided to embrace the designation.
“Besides, we thought that it was a very positive animal, very important to the ecosystem,” says party leader Gediminas Kirkilas, adding that it fits very well with political emphasis on climate.
Meanwhile the Order and Justice party, which has an eagle in its logo, would like to change it. According to the party leader Remigijus Žemaitaitis, the eagle was chosen 15 years ago and represented a strong leader.
Now, the party would like to move away from the idea and particularly its former leader Rolandas Paksas, Lithuania's former impeached president.
Žemaitaitis in general is critical of birds in party paraphernalia. “A swallow does everything from its nest [...] and storks soil everything where they nest,” he says.
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