After the conservatives decided to initiate a snap election, their liberal coalition partners insist that no step should be taken before the NATO summit that Lithuania is hosting in mid-July.
The board of the Liberal Movement, one of the three parties in Lithuania’s centre-right ruling coalition, convened on Saturday to discuss the government crisis triggered by pressure to sack the education minister over alleged abuse of municipal funds.
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The liberals agree that Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė’s cabinet should submit itself to a vote of confidence in the parliament, but they do not think that a snap election would solve the problem, the party said in a statement.
“We did not agree with the position of the conservatives’ presidium and their scenario,” Eugenijus Gentvilas, a member of the board, told BNS. “We see it as an attempt to turn individual cases into collective responsibility and lay the blame on the Seimas [parliament].”
“We keep saying that we have to be very careful as the NATO summit is approaching and the war in Ukraine continues. Now is probably not the best time to lose the government or to have a caretaker government and start campaigning for an election,” he said.
Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, speaker of the parliament and chairwoman of the Liberal Movement, cautioned against “hasty decisions”.
“We do not rule out the idea of an early election, but in my opinion, these steps should be discussed after the NATO summit, the most important political event of the year,” Čmilytė-Nielsen said in the statement.
“It would be irresponsible to turn this summit into a hostage of domestic politics or an element of an election campaign,” she added.
The Freedom Party, another member of the ruling coalition, has said it supports a government reset, but sees early parliamentary elections as a measure of last resort.
“The party's board supports the possibility of a reboot of the current government and stresses the need for all parliamentary parties to agree on a more transparent procedure for the payment of administrative expenses of political officials,” the party said in a statement issued on Monday.
At least 85 votes in the 141-seat parliament are required to call early elections.
Scandal over expense reports
There have been calls for the resignation of the conservative Education Minister Jurgita Šiugždinienė after her expense reports as Kaunas City Council member raised suspicions of abuse. Šiugždinienė has insisted she did nothing wrong and Prime Minister Šimonytė has reiterated her confidence in the education minister several times.
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As a member of the Kaunas City Council in 2019-2020, Šiugždinienė claimed expense reimbursements worth 13,800 euros. She did not, however, submit any receipts, saying this was not required by the rules.
Two more ministers, the liberal culture minister Simonas Kairys and the conservative finance minister Gintarė Skaistė, have also had to answer questions about their expenses as former Kaunas Council members.
Šiugždinienė said last Thursday she had handed in her resignation, although the prime minister has yet to accept it.
On Friday, conservative leader Gabrielius Landsbergis convened the party leadership to deal with the crisis. The presidium of the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) proposed to initiate an early general election and to consider the cabinet’s resignation if the parliament does not back the initiative.
Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said on Sunday that unless the parliament supports early elections, she will hand in her resignation.
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“If the Seimas does not find the will to reset itself, given that it is apparently very difficult to find white, fluffy and righteous people in this story who can judge others, [...] I will simply submit my resignation, which means that the government will step down after the NATO summit,” she told journalists in Klaipėda on Sunday.
Šimonytė said that she would announce in the coming days her decision on Education Minister Šiugždinienė’s resignation.
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