Lithuania’s Peasants & Greens Union unexpectedly won the most seats of any party in 20 years in parliamentary elections on Sunday, leaving it primed to form a new government to replace outgoing Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius’s coalition.
The Peasants, neck and neck with the conservative Homeland Union after the national ballot two weeks ago, triumphed in Sunday’s runoffs in single-mandate constituencies, eventually securing 54 of parliament’s 141 seats.
Homeland got 31 seats, while Butkevicius’s Social Democrats were third with 17.
As talks over a new ruling alliance begin this week, the Peasants reiterated their call to form a government of technocrats.
“The most likely coalition is still between the Peasants and the conservatives,” Ramunas Vilpisauskas, director of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University, said by e-mail. “Coalition negotiations will be difficult as neither the conservatives nor the Social Democrats are used to being a junior partner.”
Economic issues dominated campaigning in the Baltic nation of 3 million people, which seven years ago became a pioneer of the austerity policies later deployed around the rest of the continent.
The country continues to suffer from an outflow of workers in the wake of the 2008 global crisis, though the economy has rebounded.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said she would invite the parties that won most seats to a meeting yesterday, according to the Baltic News Service.
Three other parties surpassed parliament’s 5 percent entry barrier, including Order & Justice, a junior partner in the outgoing coalition, and the Liberal Party.
The Peasants, who want to end electoral swings between left and right-leaning parties, favor tighter regulation and in some cases draw inspiration from Poland’s government, according to Vilpisauskas.
The party is ready to negotiate with Homeland and the Social Democrats.
Homeland, popular among urban voters, had pledged to boost average monthly pay to 1,250 euros (US$1,360) from 772 euros now, secure foreign investment and lure back 80,000 emigrants.
Butkevicius, whose party was scheduled to meet yesterday to decide whether to join coalition talks, had promised further increases in the minimum wage.
There had been a consensus among the biggest parties on the need to meet NATO-mandated defense outlays by 2020 following Russia’s Crimea annexation, with Russian President Vladimir Putin also stationing nuclear-capable missiles in neighboring Kaliningrad.
EU sanctions against Russia continue to receive strong backing from Grybauskaite.
Fitch Ratings said in a report last month that it was “not expecting a new government to diverge from the current economic, fiscal and social-policy agenda.”
The budget deficit has been brought back within the EU’s limit of 3 percent of GDP.
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