Former military chief Pocius elected to lead parliament’s national security committee

Lithuania’s parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defence (NSGK) elected Arvydas Pocius, a former chief of defence, as its new chairman.

Nine committee members out of 11 voted in favour on Monday and one abstained.

Pocius was nominated for the post, left vacant after Laurynas Kasčiūnas was appointed defence minister, by the ruling conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) party.

His appointment has yet to be approved by a plenary vote in the parliament, Seimas.

Answering questions from the committee’s members, Pocius said that he would not support the government’s proposal to merge the Public Security Service with the police.

Pocius served as Lithuania’s chief of defence between 2009 and 2014. He was elected to the parliament in 2020, running a single-member constituency as a TS-LKD candidate.

The committee’s first attempt to elect a new chairperson failed on March 28 as opposition MPs boycotted the meeting.

Five opposition members announced on March 27 that they were suspending their participation in the committee until law-enforcement bodies investigated allegations of aggressive lobbying by military industry. The allegations were made by former Defence Minister Arvydas Anušauskas. He suggested that some companies may have been using connections with MPs to get access to government contracts.

The opposition MPs returned to the committee after the Special Investigation Service and prosecutors stated that there were no grounds to open an investigation into allegations of corruption in the national defence system.