Tuesday was the last day for presidential candidates to change their minds and withdraw their application documents without losing their 9,000-euro deposits.
At the beginning of the year, 15 candidates had declared intentions to run for the Lithuanian presidency. Only eight remain today. While the conditions are identical for all, not all have the same starting position in terms of visibility, popularity, and campaign finance.
At the moment, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, the candidate of the conservative TS-LKD party, has the biggest war chest, over 150,000 euros. Almost all of it was donated by her party.
When it comes to outside contributions, Šimonytė has announced she would only accept small donations of up to 50 euros from individuals.
Ignas Vėgėlė, a lawyer and one of the favourites in the polls, currently has the second largest campaign fund, almost 130,000 euros. Vėgėlė has contributed 10,000 himself, while his brother and father have each donated 18,000 euros, the maximum amount allowed by the law.
Lithuania has quite strict campaign donation laws. To donate large sums, one has to be a permanent resident of Lithuania and have submitted the annual income declaration to the State Tax Inspectorate (VMI). Even then, the maximum sum one can donate is 10 percent of one’s annual income but no more than 18,000 euros.
Otherwise, “you can donate up to 50 euros without declaring your income and only once,” says Lina Petronienė, chair of the Central Electoral Commission (VRK). “If you want to donate twice, you can give 30 and 20 euros or in any other configuration so that the total amount donated to one candidate does not exceed 50 euros,” she adds.
Candidates themselves can donate to their own campaigns, but there is also a limit: one-fifth of their declared assets but no more than 36,000 euros.
Meanwhile, Giedrimas Jeglinskas, the candidate fielded by the opposition party Democrats “For Lithuania”, has a little over 56,000 euros in his campaign account. Almost the entire sum was contributed by the party, led by former Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis.
The incumbent Gitanas Nausėda has raised over 50,000 euros so far. Without a party behind him, his most generous donors are businessmen: Arvydas Paukštys gave the maximum amount allowed, another 19,500 euros was donated by Dalius Trumpa and Antanas Trumpa.
The war chest of Dainius Žalimas, the candidate of the liberal Freedom Party, contains slightly less than 50,000 euros. Just over half of it was contributed by the party.
The businessman Dalius Trumpa – who also contributed to Nausėda’s campaign – donated 6,000 euros to Žalimas’ campaign.
The independent candidate Eduardas Vaitkus has more than 36,000 euros in his campaign account. He has indicated 130 donors, but donations have so far been accepted from seven.
Andrius Mazuronis, the candidate of the Labour Party, has over 2,500 euros, most of which has been contributed by the party.
Remigijus Žemaitaitis, who founded the party Nemuno Aušra, has 2,000 euros in his account so far, all of it his own contribution.
Too stringent?
Linas Kontrimas, an expert in political communication, says that Lithuania’s increasingly strict rules on election funding are making campaigns boring.
“Even those candidates who could start a good campaign engine don’t have the means. Without resources, there will be nothing. If the resources cannot come from supporters, one has to hire help and hiring requires money,” he reasons.
Kontrimas believes businesses should be allowed to donate to election campaigns and do so in bigger sums, brushing aside concerns about undue influence.
“Don’t tell me that it is impossible to put up effective safeguards,” he insists.
There is also a limit to how big a candidate’s overall campaign can be – which is 2 million euros. According to VRK chair Petronienė, no one has hit it yet.
Still, the elections watchdog has plenty of work checking that everyone abides by the rules, she adds. For example, the VRK is monitoring political advertising to see if it corresponds to campaign spending reports. And that there is no undeclared support.
“If we see that [a candidate] is organising a meeting, we look at whether the venue has been paid for, and so on,” says Petronienė.
If a candidate quits the race before using up all the campaign funds, the remaining donations are returned to the account of their party or transferred to the state budget.
The final list of candidates is expected to be approved by the VRK next week. The presidential vote will be held on May 12, with a potential run-off on May 26.
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