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Sunday in Lithuania they are held the presidential elections. There are eight candidates, but the favorites are the outgoing president Gitanas Nauseda, in office since 2019, and the prime minister Ingrida Simonyte. Nauseda is ahead in the polls, but also due to the presence of many candidates he will hardly be able to obtain at least 50 percent of the votes needed to be elected in the first round. It is therefore probable that we will go to a run-off, which should be held on May 26 and which could therefore be between Nausėda and Simonyte. The two had already competed for the presidency in the run-off in 2019, when Nauseda won with 66.5 percent of the votes.
The theme that most characterized the electoral campaign was that of security, especially towards Russia, whose war in Ukraine greatly worries Lithuanian public opinion. Lithuania – as well as the other Baltic countries, Estonia and Latvia – is exposed to Russian aggression for geographical and historical reasons: it is located very close to Russia (it also borders the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) and was part of the Soviet Union, from which it declared itself independent in 1990, later becoming part of the European Union and NATO.
The issue of security was particularly decisive in the electoral campaign because it is perhaps the area in which the Lithuanian president’s action has the most impact: in the institutional system of Lithuania the president has the role of supreme commander of the armed forces, and his main tasks they are the oversight of foreign policy and security policies.
Nauseda is participating as an independent candidate: he is 59 years old, he is an economist who has worked for large investment banks and has also taught at university. He is a staunch supporter of Ukraine in the war against Russia and during his term in office he has repeatedly made explicit comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin. For example, when in March one of Alexei Navalny’s closest collaborators – Putin’s main political opponent, who died in unclear circumstances in a Siberian prison in February – was attacked in Lithuania Nauseda commented: «I can only say one thing [al presidente russo Vladimir] Putin: no one is afraid of you here.”
Her strongest opponent is the current Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, 49 years old, who is the only woman candidate and who polls show at 14 percent, against Nauseda’s 30 percent. She is a candidate with the center-right party TS-LKD (Union of the Fatherland – Christian Democrats of Lithuania). Simonyte is also a supporter of Ukraine, and like Nauseda proposes to increase defense spending to at least 3 percent of Lithuania’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (up from 2.75 expected this year), to finance the modernization of the army.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
While agreeing on foreign policy, the two main candidates have different positions on other issues, such as civil rights, on which Nauseda has proven to be more conservative and Simonyte more progressive: for example, he is against civil unions between same-sex people, which in Lithuania are not yet possible and are instead supported by Simonyte.
– Listen to Globo: Is the war in Ukraine going the way Putin wanted?, with Davide Maria De Luca