A group of Lithuanian MPs have drafted a bill, suggesting that Vytautas Landsbergis, the country's first post-independence leader, be recognised as a former head of state.
Landsbergis was one of the leaders of Lithuania's independence movement and served as the chairman of the Supreme Council-Reconstituent Seimas when it declared the country independent from the USSR in 1990.
In Lithuania, the head of state title is accorded to the president, but the institution was only introduced by the constitution of 1992. Algirdas Brazauskas was elected Lithuania's first president the following year.
However, the head of state status should also be accorded to Landsbergis, according to the bill drafted by Parliament Speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, conservative MPs Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė and Paulė Kuzmickienė, and liberal MP Ieva Pakarklytė.
According to the draft, “the chairman of the Supreme Council-Reconstituent Seimas was the head of state of independent Lithuania as of March 11, 1990”.
The bill also states that Landsbergis was the highest-ranking Lithuanian official and “exercised the constitutional duties of the head of state from March 11, 1990, to November 25, 1992”.
The authors say the law would recognise Landsbergis' exceptional status during the years when he chaired the Supreme Council.
The bill's explanatory note also states that the chairman had the mandate to represent Lithuania internationally, sign bills into laws, negotiate and sign international treaties, accept credentials from foreign diplomats and other functions currently performed by the president.
Landsbergis himself has commented that it is important to say that Lithuania had a head of state in 1990–1992.
“It is a matter of prestige for the country, so that no one can say that the state was built in some unknown ways on March 11, 1990, and did not even have a leader,” he told BNS on Monday .
“Everyone knows and remembers the actual situation, but this has not been put into words formally and then we see some cunning people claiming that the top-ranking public officer of that time was not the head of state,” Landsbergis added.
He noted that Arnold Rüütel, former chairman of Estonia’s Supreme Council, had been recognized as the head of state in his country.
According to Landsbergis, the granting of this status would not be important to him personally.
“It is important personally to my late wife, she used to feel the injustice,” Landsbergis said.
There have been previous attempts to secure the head of state status for Landsbergis, but the initiative of the then Speaker Viktoras Pranckietis failed to garner sufficient political support.
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