President says she will go to Constitutional Court if government cannot resolve doubts

“These doubts must be resolved. If the government won’t do that, I will be forced to use Constitutional law, meaning that I would have to appeal to the Constitutional Court to ask whether the government’s decision violates the Constitution,” Grybauskaitė said during an interview on LRT Radio.

When asked specifically about Minister of the Environment Kęstutis Trečiokas, who was implicated in the Druskininkai scandal by phone conversation transcripts, Grybauskaitė said “I think that, after this, his work in the government will become complicated. Both the public’s and my trust in him have fallen. As I mentioned, most doubts have arisen because of contradictory evaluations of his decision and its possible lack of transparency.”

Minister Trečiokas, of the Order and Justice party, has been named in an investigation about suspected corruption in passing a government resolution that benefited the mayor of Druskininkai. Investigators later dropped the case, but released phone conversation transcript indicating that Trečiokas was asked by the Druksininkai mayor to push the resolution through.

Butkevičius said on Wednesday that he discussed “moral and ethical” aspects of Minister Trečiokas’ behaviour, but did not demand his resignation.