Lithuania – Presidential election

Lithuania went to the polls on Sunday to elect the president.

The Central Electoral Commission reports that the turnout was 51.71%.

According the CEC, the candidates won the following support:

Dalia Grybauskaitė (non-party) – 69.08%
Algirdas Butkevičius (Lithuanian Social Democratic Party) – 11.83%
Valentinas Mazuronis (Order and Justice) – 6.16%
Valdemar Tomaševski (Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania) – 4.74%
Kazimira Danutė Prunskienė (Lithuanian Peasant Popular Union) – 3.91%
Loreta Graužinienė (Labour Party) – 3.61%
Česlovas Jezerskas – 0.67%

The turnout figure is crucial because Art. 81 of the Constitution states: “The candidate for the post of President of the Republic who, during the first election round in which at least a half of the voters participate, receives the votes of more than half of all the voters who voted in the election, shall be deemed the elected candidate. If less than a half of the registered voters participate in the election, the candidate who receives the greatest number of votes, but no less than one-third of votes of all the voters, shall be deemed the elected candidate. If, during the first election round, no single candidate gets the requisite number of votes, a repeat election shall be organized after two weeks between the two candidates who received the greatest number of votes.”

In other words, Grybauskaitė is elected at the first ballot!

Grybauskaitė is currently Lithuania’s EU Commissioner and is responsible for Financial Programming and the Budget. Her EU profile page is here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *