The meeting was proposed by conservative MP Andrius Kubilius during a joint meeting of opposition groups, an idea backed by Parliamentary Speaker Viktoras Pranckietis of the ruling Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union.
“The question is whether we will go on as if nothing happened or search for ways to consult and prevent abuse from gaining ground,” said Kubilius.
Under the Seimas statute, the parliament can hold a meeting of all parliamentarians for preliminary discussion of certain matters, and the rules of the statute do not apply on such meetings, which do not result in any decisions.
Pranckietis said he would have proposed such a meeting himself.
Representatives of the opposition said they would return to the plenary hall, if the parliament goes back to adoption of the amendments to the law on medical practice that supported the conservatives’ proposal to raise salaries of doctors studying to become specialists.
The proposal was approved by majority of two votes, however, ruling parties called for a repeated vote after Kęstutis Bacvinka of the ruling Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union withdrew his vote. The parliamentary speaker then announced a revote, and the bid to raise the salaries was overruled. The opposition – the conservatives, the Liberals, the Social Democrats, some members of the Order and Justice party and the mixed group – left the plenary hall in protest of the ballot.
Without their votes, the ruling parties cannot pass laws, as they do not have the necessary 71 votes.
Elders of the parliament’s opposition groups turned to the parliament’s ethics guards over the parliamentary speaker’s conduct, asking to conclude whether Pranckietis did the right thing by announcing a revote.