Farmers downplays absence of formal majority in Seimas

Ramūnas Karbauskis
DELFI / Domantas Pipas

“We do not need to count votes, we need to look in plenary at how voting takes place and then we can say how many votes there were,” Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis told journalists at the parliament on Tuesday.

Asked whether the current government was working in minority, Skvernelis replied: “If there is another majority, it should set up the government. If there is no other majority, it means that this is the ruling majority.”

LFGU, which has 57 mandates in Lithuania’s 141-seat parliament with Parliamentary Speaker Viktoras Pranckietis, has signed a coalition agreement with the former political group of the Social Democratic Party. However, the group split in two and changed names, and the Social Democratic gropu supporting the LFGU now has 12 members, which leaves the ruling coalition with 69 votes, less than half of all parliamentary mandates.

Ramunas Karbauskis, the elder of the parliament’s biggest LFGU group, has also said that “budget vote will soon show who has the majority and who doesn’t.”

“If someone else has the majority, let them form the government, however, as you know, the opposition will get fewer votes in support of the budget than it did a year ago,” Karbauskis told journalists at the parliament on Tuesday.

Asked whether the current situation meant a minority government, he replied: “This means that we have enough votes for all the decisions that Lithuania needs.”

The newly-founded Lithuanian Social Democratic Party group, which includes seven members, on Monday announced it was an opposition force.

Other opposition groups include the conservative Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats with 31 members, the Liberal Movement group with 13 members, the Order and Justice party with seven members and the Social Democratic Party group, a total of 58 parliamentarians.

The eight-member Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania – Union of Christian Families is not part of the ruling majority or the opposition. Additionally, six MPs work in the mixed group, which automatically includes parliamentarians who are not members of other political groups.

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