Lithuania held Parliamentary elections and referendum

On 12 September Lithuanian held its parliamentary elections.  The elections are taking place every four years on the second Sunday of October.

In Lithuania, 70 parliamentarians are elected in multi-mandate district and the remaining 71 win mandates in single-mandate voting.

The elections  multi-mandate district were already accomplished on Sunday afternoon after more than 25 percent of all voters turned to vote.Here are the multi-mandate results after the votes been counted in 2025 districts out of 2036

• The Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats with 17 mandates and received 19.57 percent.
• The National Resurrection Party with 13 mandated and 15.14 percent
• The Order and Justice (Paksas) Party 11 mandates and 12.74 percent
• The Social Democrats with 11 mandates and 11.75 percent
• The Labour (Uspaskich) Party and Youth coalition eight mandates and 9.03 percent.
• The Liberal Movement 5 seats with 5.68 percent
• The Liberal and Centre Union five seats with 5.31 percent

Rest of the parties did not gather required 5 percent in order to get into the parliament.

Three MPs were elected to the parliament through the single-mandate voting.  In order to do that a candidate must get 50 percent plus one vote.  Hence, on the September 26 is going to be a second tour in which two most popular candidates will compete.

Usually, the Conservatives Home Land union and the Social Democrats are performing the best in the single-mandate.  At the moment 

• 44 Conservatives are leading in their constituencies,
• 25 Social Democrats,
• 16 Order and Justice,
• 10 from Labour,
• 10 form the Liberal and Centre,
• 9 from Resurrection Party,
• 8 from Liberal Movement,
• 6 Farmers  
• 5 from Labour,
• 5 Independent
• 4 from the Polish election action.

At the same time the referendum took place.  The referendum statement sounded something like that ‘‘I am in favour of the extension of the nuclear plant’s life span until the technically safe term expands, but not longer than the new nuclear plant will be built.’

Let me know if you need ‘further explanation’.  Under Lithuanian legislation, the non-binding referendum is only valid if more than 50 percent of registered voters cast their votes.   However, for the referendum to succeed it lacked some 60,000 votes as only some 47.9 percent of registered voters marked their referendum ballot papers on Sunday.  Some 88.64 percent of referendum participants voiced their support for the extension of operations of the nuclear facility until the construction of new nuclear power plant. Some 3 percent of referendum ballot papers were spoilt.

The foreign observers paid a huge interest in the referendum.  I thing it is much more important for Ignalina lifespan is what parties will form the government.  Meaning that some of them (Paksas) mentioned that if their were to form the government their will resist the closure of Ignalina.

As the BNS reported, the Chairman of Lithuania’s Central Electoral Committee, Zenonas Vaigauskas, announced that no major violations for invalidation of the results of the general elections had been registered.  “We have received no reports of major violations for invalidation of the election outcome, although some violations are alarming, and law-enforcement institutions are determined to take relevant measures against them,” Vaigauskas told a news conference on Monday.

All possible coalitions are possible, however best is to wait for the final result.  There are possibilities of Centre Left, Centre Right and the Rainbow coalitions.

The biggest surprise is second place for the newfound Resurrection Party, rather a bad result for Paksas and a quite disappointing result for Uspaskich’d Labour.  I am also surprise that it seems that the Farmers and the Social Liberals will be out.  I was rather convinced that the split liberals (Liberal and Centre and Liberal Movement) will not get into Seimas due to the 5 percent for the fresh hold.  It seems that both of them are inn and after this ‘success’ the two parties began making noises about possible unification.

Overall I regard this election positively, but still, lets wait and see until September 26