Linas Jegelevičius
The controversial remarks of the Irish president Michael D. Higgins, on the NATO membership, contrasting Ireland and Latvia and Lithuania were largely omitted by Lithuania’s establishment, lawmakers, and analysts – mostly due to indolence caused by the summer season.
Yet those who noticed it shot back acrimoniously.
Defending fiercely Ireland’s traditional neutrality, the country’s President Michael D. Higgins compared the country with the Baltic States, warning against a dangerous foreign policy “shift”.
Before a Government Forum on International Security held last week, Higgins said in an interview for Business Post that the country should remain traditionally neutral and keep away of “burying itself in other people’s agendas”.
The Irish president scolded the government for kicking off a debate on the possibility of joining NATO and said that ministers were “playing with fire” and compromising Ireland’s neutrality.
“If you interfere with that, there’s no difference between you and Lithuania and Latvia,”
President Higgins said in the interview published last Sunday.
With an angry backlash spilling in both Lithuania and Latvia, the Irish president apologized for the remarks he made in the interview about Louise Richardson, the independent chair of the government’s Consultative Forum on International Security Policy, whom he called a “dame of the British Empire”, implying she was biased towards the UK.
However, he did not back-pedaled from other points made on Ireland’s neutrality in the interview.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Lansbergis, who is always blunt and vitriolic when reacting to foreign leaders’ dubious statements, was lenient to the Irish President’s observation, saying: “I do not believe President Higgins referred to Lithuania in a negative context in his remarks….I would say it’s about the security situation. Lithuania is in a region that is vulnerable and close to aggressive neighbors, and
there is a lot of emphasis on defence and the need to strengthen it, and that’s why the comparison is being made.”
According to the Lithuanian foreign minister, every country has the right to choose its own way of ensuring security, whether it is a military alliance or maintaining neutrality, and such discussions are a natural consequence of changes in the security situation in Europe.
“I am familiar with the discussion that is taking place in Ireland as the country sees the emerging security challenges, it is a North Atlantic country, although not part of the alliance, and they are having that discussion, but it is entirely part of their sovereignty to decide how they see their security,” Landsbergis was quoted.
But some other Lithuanian commentators did not turn a blind eye to Higgins’ comparison.Approached by BNN, Naglis Puteikis, a former MP and now an advisor to an opposition MP, said that the Irish President must be one of Putin’s buddies still left around.
“Many of them have been dormant now, as there is not much to say in defence of Putin amid the war,
but, given a chance, they still tend to pop up and can stir ripples, like in this case. To me, politicians of the kind are like meat frozen in a fridge – once you pull it out, it thaws out quickly and becomes stinky,” N. Puteikis said.
“But speaking seriously, such remarks (of the Irish president) sound strange to me, especially considering how hard-fought their own independence has been. For many Irishmen England is what Russia is for Lithuanians – oppressor. So in that context, I’d expect an Irish president to be more sensitive and delicate when choosing words,” the former Lithuanian legislator emphasised.
Petras Auštrevičius, a Lithuanian europarliamentarian, told BNN that the Irish president’s remarks were “out of touch”.
“But I got to know the president a little bit better than many perhaps – he is kind of an ultra-left politician with communistic hues.
Besides, the comparison came from the lips of a poet and writer (according to Wikipedia, Higgins has had poems published in a number of periodicals, as well as publishing four collections of his poetry – L. J.), so I think that people of Muse are more creative,” he said.
Povilas Gylys, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister during 1992-1996 and now the country’s parliamentarian, pondered that, due to his venerable age (Higgins is 82 – L. J.), the Irish president has a “deeper understanding” of peace and war.
“In a way, I can relate to him: perhaps, he is a man of peace, not of war. That’s the position I’ve taken for long. Sadly, nowadays, we have very few peacemakers but many warmongers. No membership – and that of Ireland in NATO – comes without a consequence. It just does not seem to me that the Irish head-of-state said something inappropriate,” P. Gylys told BNN.
President Michael D. Higgins paid a visit to Vilnius in 2018.
“Lithuanians living in Ireland are very welcome. This community makes a very positive contribution not only economically, but also culturally,” he said then.
Official statistics show that about 40,000 people live in Ireland. Lithuanians, but Lithuanian officials believe that the real number is twice as high.