Lithuanian Liberal Movement to check results after Auštrevičius’ doubts in leader election

Eugenijus Gentvilas, Petras Auštrevičius
DELFI / Orestas Gurevičius

Gentvilas reportedly won a narrow victory against Vitalijus Gailius, chairman of the parliamentary Anti-Corruption Commission, in the Saturday’s elections for the Liberal Movement’s leadership, supported by 330 members against 329.

“The 330 against 329 result is more than interesting when you end up learning that 662 persons voted in the ballot, while 656 had been registered. Political magic of numbers?,” Auštrevičius wrote on Facebook in late hours of Saturday.

Dovilė Tuskenytė, the party’s communications chief, said the discrepancies would be checked.

“The vote counting panel drafted minutes after the congress that envisages checking the discrepancies,” Tuskenytė told BNS.

She refrained to comment on how the ballot could include more delegates than the number of registered participants.

In Gentvilas’ words, the party is working to verify the situation but the winner should not change.

“As far as we understand, the criticism here is not about the result of the elections of the different but about the six persons who received the secret ballot codes but have not signed the receipt paper. The secretariat and the vote counting commission confirmed that two people have already turned up who took part in the congress, paid the five euro participation fee, signed there, received the secret ballot code and didn’t sign there. I am glad there are no doubt about the electronic secret voting system, just the mistakes of the secretariat – failure to take a signature from the person who had received the secret ballot code,” he told the national radio LRT on Sunday.

The party’s congress also approved eight deputies to the chairman. Auštrevičius resigned from the position in October and was not appointed as vice-chairman during the last election.

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