VILNIUS — Lithuania’s Speaker of the Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament) Arūnas Valinskas confirmed that he would not resign from his post today despite calls to do so from President Dalia Grybauskaitė and others.
Lithuanian Speaker of the Seimas Arūnas Valinskas has been dogged by allegations of assisting gangsters. Photo used courtesy of the alfa.lt news website.
“Sorry, but I’m not going to say goodbye today,” Valinskas said in a prerecorded call to Lithuanian television networks TV3 and LNK, adding that the allegations against him were “cheap.”
Valinskas’ announcement verifies what Social Democrat Algirdas Butkevičius said this morning after he and other opposition members met with the Speaker of the Seimas.
“The parliamentary speaker said he doesn’t intend to resign,” Butkevičius said at a press conference.
Little support
Valinskas said he intends to find out whether the ruling conservative coalition will continue to support him if the opposition puts a motion of no confidence to vote.
Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius has not come out strongly against Valinskas but Grybauskaitė announced that “there’s nothing to verify anymore” and demanded that Valinskas resign immediately.
Meanwhile a recent Baltijos Tryimai poll shows Valinskas to be the least popular politician in the country with only a 14 percent approval rating.
Vilnius University professor and political analyst Kęstutis Girnius told Baltic Reports that Valinskas is only delaying the inevitable.
“The choice is not remaining Speaker of the Seimas or not. The choice is between resigning or being fired, and I think he made a very unwise choice,” Girnius said. “I think when push comes to they’ll vote him out … the chances are he’ll get no more than 20 votes.”
Girnius said the Valinskas scandal has dimmed the newly-formed National Resurrection Party’s future prospects.
“It’s a party with no future, it had no party before the scandal,” Girnius opined. “Now it’s split in half. By the time the next election comes, the politically viable members will have joined other parties.”
