MEP aims to lead Lithuania as Social Democrats win first election round

Lithuania’s Social Democrats prevailed in the first round of Vilnius’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. Leader Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, a member of the European Parliament, said she would quit as an MEP to take up the job of prime minister. 

The party’s 19-percent result allowed it to squeak past the current ruling conservative Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) on 18 percent, according to preliminary results. 

In Lithuania, no government party has ever been returned to power since the country’s 1990 independence.

“The government in Lithuania always loses. Whether social democrats, farmers or conservatives,” said Mažvydas Jastramskis, associate professor at the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science, in a post on Facebook.

Jastramskis noted that the Social Democrats (LSDP) “wasn’t even able to get 20 percent” of the vote and said the party “did not manage to dominate,” although its result might improve in the Oct. 27 second round of the election, a run-off in constituencies with no clear winner. According LRT, LSDP could get up to 37 seats in the second round while TS-LKD could snag another 29. Lithuania’s parliament has 141 seats.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, meanwhile, was already anticipating an overall victory for the LSDP: “Lithuania’s Social Democrats clearly won the election,” he said for the Baltic News Service news agency. 

Blinkevičiūtė has already begun coalition talks with the Union of Democrats “For Lithuania” and with the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, while shunning the nationalist-populist Dawn of Nemunas, founded last November, which won 15 percent of the vote. 

She also confirmed she was ready to lead the country’s next government, although she would be “sad” to leave the European Parliament, where she has served since 2009. 

TS-LKD leader Ingrida Šimonytė, the country’s current prime minister, was cautious in her response to the vote results, saying it was too early to know whether her party would end up in government or in opposition. 

The election results mean that Lithuania’s pro-Western and pro-Ukraine foreign policy is unlikely to change, with the Social Democrats vocal in their support for increasing the defense budget. 

“We have consensus in foreign policy in Lithuania,” Nausėda said. The president is responsible for foreign policy, according to Lithuania’s constitution. 

Lithuania’s smaller pro-Russian parties were wiped out during the election. “Openly pro-Russian elements, as it should be, are not popular among Lithuanians and are out,” Jastramskis said. “[Viktor] Uspaskich is finally ending his political agony.”

The Russian-born Uspaskich, a former MEP involved in several scandals such as allegedly hiring fake assistants to defraud the European Parliament out of €500,000, did not secure seats in Lithuania’s parliament for his “Peace Coalition” of three parties.