Lithuania - 13/27 October 2024 Seimas election
In the Republic of Lithuania, participation in elections is not mandatory. In Lithuania, there are four types of elections: parliamentary elections for the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, presidential elections, municipal elections, and elections to the European Parliament. Each type of election follows its own set of rules. Only Lithuanian citizens can vote or run for the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) and the Presidency. Foreigners do not have the right to participate in these elections as candidates.
Only citizens of the Republic of Lithuania have the right to donate to the political campaign participants of the Presidential elections of the Republic of Lithuania. Financing political campaign participants through third parties is prohibited. Persons who do not have the right to finance political campaign participants according to this law are prohibited from supporting them in any form. If a participant of an election political campaign purchases goods and receives services at a lower than market price for the purposes of the election political campaign, the price difference is considered a non-monetary donation. Movable or immovable objects, information, property rights, intellectual activity results, as well as other material and non-material values, gratuitous actions and voluntary works, results of actions are considered a non-monetary donation to an independent participant, if the costs of their acquisition are considered election political campaigns in accordance with the Election Code.
Citizens of the Republic of Lithuania elect the President of the Republic for a five-year term. A regular election of the President of the Republic was held on the last Sunday two months before the expiry of the term of office of the President of the Republic. Election day was 12 May 2024. Voting in polling stations takes place from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. (re-voting on 26 May). Voters who come to vote at the polling station will have to present a document confirming their personal identity to the election organizers.
On Sunday 26 May 2024, Gitanas Nauseda secured a second five-year term as Lithuanian president after receiving 74.43 percent of the votes in the election run-off. “The people of Lithuania have given me a great mandate of trust and I am well aware that I will have to cherish this credit of trust,” he told journalists in Vilnius. “Now that I have five years of experience, I believe that I will be able to use this jewel in a proper way, first and foremost to achieve the goals of prosperity for all the people of Lithuania,” he added.
Nauseda, who ran as an independent candidate, said he will continue to focus on the welfare state during his second term as the head of state. He also stressed foreign policy and security as two important areas of focus. Nauseda vowed to refresh his team for a new term but says he wants to keep a few key people. “I see a few key people that I would like to keep at all costs. They are important to me. I have had many opportunities to see their professionalism and dedication to their work,” Nauseda told journalists.
Before all the votes were counted, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonyte conceded defeat to the incumbent Nauseda. “I would like to congratulate the president-elect of Lithuania,” Šimonyte, the candidate of the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats, told journalists.
Nauseda received the highest-ever support in the history of presidential run-offs in Lithuania. In 2019, 65.68 percent of voters voted for Nauseda in the presidential run-off, while Dalia Grybauskaite received 69.09 percent of the votes in 2009.
Members of the Seimas are elected for a term of four years. It has a hybrid voting system in which half of parliament is elected by popular vote while the rest is decided in runoff votes between the top two candidates. Regular elections to the Seimas are held on the second Sunday of October, in the year of the expiration of the powers of the Seimas members.
Lithuanians headed to polls on 13 October 2024 to vote in the first round of the general elections, which are expected to see a change in government. The opposition Social Democrats (SD) were ahead of Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte's conservative Homeland Union. Simonyte's popularity has been eroded by the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, political scandals and high inflation that topped 20% two years ago. Analysts question if her alliance with two liberal parties can stay in power. Lithuania's Social Democrats, formerly an opposition party, were leading after the first round of voting. The party will try to form a majority coalition government with two other parties after the elections, Social Democrat leader Vilija Blinkeviciute told reporters.
The Social Democrats aimed to form a center-left coalition with two other opposition parties — For Lithuania, and the Farmers and Greens Union. If SD wins, they are likely to maintain the country's hawkish stance against Russia and hefty defense spending. SD leader Vilija Blinkeviciute has also vowed to tackle the widening inequality by raising taxes on the wealthy to help fund social support and healthcare.
With the second round of voting on 27 October 2024, the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP), led by Ms. Vilija Blinkeviciute, a member of the European Parliament, became the largest force in the 141-member Seimas, winning 52 seats. Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonyte’s Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS–LKD, officially led by foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis) came second, winning 28 seats, down from 50 in 2019. The Political Party "Dawn of Nemunas" (PPNA), formed by Mr. Remigijus Žemaitaitis in November 2023, came third, winning 20 seats. Žemaitaitis is a former member of the Freedom and Justice Party (PLT), which was known as the Lithuanian Freedom Union (Liberals) (PLT) until 2020.
The largest river in Lithuania is the Nemunas, it’s 937 km long. Only 359 km of the Nemunas is in Lithuanian territory, the rest of the river flows through Belarus and the Kaliningrad region of Russia. Lithuanians say that the Nemunas is the father of rivers, it is mentioned in the works of poets and folk songs.
The 2024 elections were held against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine that started in February 2022. During election campaigning, the major parties focused on the country’s defence and immigration, the use of long-range missiles in the war in Ukraine, and tax reforms. In accordance with the constitutional amendments adopted by Parliament in April 2022, the minimum eligibility age for parliamentary election has been lowered from 25 to 21 years old. The new eligibility age was applied for the first time to the 2024 elections.
The Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) signed the coalition agreement 12 November 2024 to form the ruling majority with two other parties, the Democratic Union “For Lithuania” and the Dawn of the Nemunas party. The latter’s participation has sparked international controversy over the party leader’s past anti-Semitic statements. The LSDP had also held consultations with the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVŽS), but both Democratic leader Saulius Skvernelis and Dawn of the Nemunas chairman Remigijus Žemaitaitis insisted they would not work in a coalition with the party led by Ramunas Karbauskis.
Twenty seats in Lithuania's parliament will be held by a party whose leader is known for his anti-Israel bent. This followed a wild campaign that had many worried that a party better known for its anti-Israel statements than its policy proposals might win several dozen seats in Lithuania's parliament. But the second round of voting confirmed the dominance of establishment parties in the Seimas, the parliament. The Nemunas Dawn party did, however, win at least 20 seats — more than enough to continue its verbal dart throwing at "elites that became disconnected from the people" from within the parliament.
The Social Democrat’s decision to invite a party led by the controversial politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis attracted local and international criticism due to his statements last year about Israel and Jews. Žemaitaitis, the leader of the Dawn of the Nemunas party, has been accused of anti-Semitism, something that the politician has denied. Anti-Semitism charges against him are centred around a handful of statements he made in May and June 2023 about Israel and Jews. The Lithuanian parliament, Seimas, appointed a special commission in autumn 2023 to assess them. The commission then turned to the Constitutional Court to give a ruling on whether Žemaitaitis’ statements constituted a serious violation of his oath of office, thus giving grounds for impeachment. The commission quoted five public statements by Žemaitaitis, most of them made on social media.
On May 8, 2023, he posted on Facebook a comment on a news story about Israel having demolished an EU-funded school in the West Bank: “Apparently, there are animals in this world besides Putin, Israel. […] One has to state that this school was built thanks to EU funding. After such events, no wonder there appear sayings like this: A Jew was climbing the ladder and accidentally fell off; take a stick, kids, and kill that little Jew [this is a well-known Lithuanian anti-Semitic rhyme]. What else must happen for Israel to realise that such provocations and such actions only stir more anger and hatred against Jews and their people.”
On June 13, 2023, Žemaitaitis posted on Facebook a comment on Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonyte’s visit to Israel: “Our Prime Minister Šimonyte could not have put it any nastier while in Israel last weekend: [quotes a headline] ‘Prime Minister met with Israeli President: our historical ties and friendship between our countries are what we are proud of.’ It’s nasty for Šimonyte to say such nonsense when on June 3, 1944, Lithuania’s Jews alongside the Russians killed the village of Pirciupiai and its people. […] How much longer will our politicians be kneeling to the Jews who killed our compatriots, contributed to the surveillance, torture of Lithuanians and the destruction of our state. […] There was a holocaust of Jews, but also an even bigger holocaust of Lithuanians in Lithuania!” In fact, the atrocity was committed by German SS troops.
The Constitutional Court ruled last April that Žemaitaitis’ statements violated articles in the constitution on hate speech and discrimination on the basis of nationality. According to the court, this was a gross violation of the constitution and a breach of his oath as a parliament member. Žemaitaitis then resigned from the Seimas, arguably in order to avoid impeachment which would have barred him from running for elected office. There is still an ongoing criminal investigation over his statements.
The Social Democrats’ decision to invite the Dawn of the Nemunas into the coalition has drawn international criticism because of its leader’s past statements about Israel and Jews. Representatives of the United States, Germany, and Israel have issued statements criticising Lithuania’s would-be coalition for including the Dawn of the Nemunas. Ben Cardin, chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said that including the party, whose leader has been indicted for inciting violence and hatred against Jews, “undermines the core values that unite our nations”. “At a time when antisemitism is on the rise around the world, giving a platform to anti-Semitic rhetoric and acts of hate is not just a betrayal of shared democratic ideals, but a physical threat to the safety of Jewish and minority communities,” he said in a statement.
The three-party coalition would hold at least 86 seats out of 141 in the new parliament. The coalition agreement signed by the LSDP, the Democratic Union “For Lithuania” and the Dawn of the Nemunas party includes a clause on combating anti-Semitism.
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