Linas Jegelevičius
The revelation of the Communist Party membership in the late 1980s has tangibly scathed the incumbent Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nausėda, however, it has not seemingly been a lethal blow to the head of the state.
According to Vilmorus, a Lithuanian pollster, every fifth respondent thumbed down Nausėda following the disclosure, sinking his popularity from 64 percent to 54.5 percent over the last month.
“Damage has obviously been done, but I am sure it will be short-term. When former president Dalia Grybauskaitė was embroiled in an email leakage scandal (in 2018, Lietuvos Rytas daily leaked a barrage of compromising emails between Grybauskaitė, who had set up a special email for the correspondence, and Eligijus Masiulis, the beleaguered former leader of the Lithuanian Liberal Movement, who has been prosecuted for a 100-thousand-euro bribe – L. J.), she also saw a 10 percent hit to her ratings for a month or so before surging back,” Vytautas Dumbliauskas, associate professor of Mykolas Romeris University, told BNN.
In all, 20.7 percent of people in Lithuania said they changed their opinion of the president to the negative side.
Meanwhile, 61.2 percent reported no change in their opinion, and 3.3 percent said their opinion changed for the better. Another 14.8 percent said they had no opinion on this issue.
Interestingly, respondents of the ruling conservative Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats (HU-LCD), known colloquially as the Conservatives, reported the biggest negative shift in opinion, with 54.5 percent saying they now viewed the president negatively.
Liberal Freedom and Justice party voters responded they were neutral about Nausėda’s Communist Party affiliation, with 85.7 percent saying they did not change their opinion of the president.
While most people under 29 said they now held a more negative opinion of the president (26.7 percent), the age group also had the highest proportion of people with no opinion (28.3 percent), according to the survey, according to the survey.
The largest number of those who did not change their opinion about Nausėda were those aged 50 to 59 (75.3 percent).
The Vilmorus poll was ordered by BNS.
A separate Vilmorus poll, published by the Lietuvos Rytas daily last weekend, showed that the public’s favourable opinion of Nausėda has fallen from 64 percent to 54.5 percent over a month.
In April, the presidential office confirmed that Nausėda had joined the Communist Party in May 1988. When Nausėda vied for the presidential seat in 2019, he skipped the question in the Central Electoral Commission’s questionnaire on whether he belonged or had belonged to a political party or political organisation. Amid the scandal, he insisted the question was in the optional part of the questionnaire.
Calling the membership “a youthful indiscretion”, Nausėda emphasised that, in his life, he has devoted himself to the life of a scholar economist and “strived” to rub out the youthful indiscretion later in life – with his impeccable professional activity and service to the state.
The news about the membership was first broken out by Dovydas Pancerovas, a journalist working for the Laisvės TV channel.
“Although Nausėda admits he made a mistake by joining the party, he says the membership was a small thing. However, little things are revealed, not hidden for a long time. If he had openly recognised the membership after Lithuania regained its independence, it would have been just a small blemish on his biography.
By deliberately and consistently hiding his membership, Nausėda misled his voters,
partly by presenting himself as something he was not,” Kęstutis Girnius, a prominent Lithuanian political analyst of American descent, has told BNN.
With the president in hot water, Ignas Vėgėlė, a potential presidential runner in 2024 and who has grown his popularity by opposing and questioning the Lithuanian government’s COVID-19 policies, especially mandatory inoculation, and omnipresent quarantine, was quick to take advantage of the dent in Nausėda’s reputation, saying: “I almost see no possibility of not participating in the presidential election.”
According to him, the increasing support of the population forces him to think about the decision to raise his candidacy for the post of head of Lithuania. The ambiguous lawyer has recently been ranked among the most realistic candidates for the presidency in public opinion polls. He is the third in all the polls, after Nausėda and Ingrida Šimonytė, the Prime Minister and a member of the Homeland Union (HU).
A poll conducted in late March, before Nausėda’s Communist Party membership admission, suggested that 20.4 percent would vote for the current president in 2024, and 10.5 percent would support I. Šimonytė and 7.7 percent would cast their vote for lawyer I. Vėgėlė.
“It’s really a very big trust, really big. And for me, if you turn everything back like that, it is completely unexpected…This gives a really big push not to deceive, not to disappoint those people who put their hopes in me, who see in me a possible change in politics, a change in a different speech, a change in different actions. I am really considering this very seriously (about running for president – L. J.)) and considering that the trust remains, it would be very difficult for me to make a different decision,” I. Vėgėlė told Lrytas.lt in late March.
However, he admitted says that, for now, he cannot pay as much attention to political or social activities as he would like. Therefore, he is in no hurry to make a final decision, let alone reveal it.
With Šimonytė unlikely to agree to again wade in the same waters (in 2019, she lost to Nausėda in the runoff – L. J.), the Conservatives’ leader Gabrielius Landsbergis, who is Lithuania’s Foreign minister, has said that
Arvydas Anušauskas, the current Defence minister, would make an excellent HU candidate for the race.
Being one of the most favourably evaluated politicians in the country, MEP Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, who is also the leader of the Social Democrats, LSDP, has not yet said if she will seek the party’s nomination.
“I’m not thinking about myself today, because now we were very focused on the municipal elections. We really worked a lot and I personally gave a lot of heart, time, and nerves and health to it,” the social democrat has said.
The election process for a new LSDP leader is also currently underway. The party branches nominated V. Blinkevičiūtė, MEP Juozas Olekas, and Jonava Mayor Mindaugas Sinkevičius as potential party leaders. However, the latter two have announced that they are withdrawing their candidacies, so only V. Blinkevičiūtė is participating in the LSDP chairman elections.
“If there are no other blows ahead, Nausėda’s Communist Party affiliation revelation will dwindle away from the people’s memories – sooner or later. Let’s just admit that the other possible candidates are just too weak, really not up to Nausėda, so, at the end of the day, Nausėda can still feel comfortable. If we do not see names of other presidential candidates emerge, and only with those aforementioned ones on the ballot, I’d not be surprised if he wins already in the first round,” Dumbliauskas told BNN.
Read also: BNN ANALYSES | Lithuanian President’s skeleton in his closet revealed – membership in the Communist Party