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On Thursday, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) decided not to register 11 people who had not indicated a prior conviction as candidates for members of the Seimas.
The CEC allowed three politicians to complete the questionnaires because they had marked their convictions but did not list all the articles of the Penal Code for which they were found guilty.
The majority of the members of the Electoral Commission decided that these people did not intend to hide their criminal records and, therefore, could correct their questionnaires. Three members of the CCA, Tauras Rutkūnas, Aistė Žilinskienė and Andrius Puksas, disagreed with this position. According to them, the courts have clarified that the law does not provide for the possibility of reviewing the application documents.
Some candidates who attended the CEC meeting on Thursday said they did not understand the questionnaire requirements, others said they encountered technical hurdles: their court conviction records were not stored electronically, a pair of politicians said they received a fine for a crime administrative rather than a criminal offense.
People who tried to participate in the Seimas elections were convicted of failure to perform official duties, false testimony, incitement to hatred and incitement to violence, fraudulent or negligent accounting, and defamation.
CEC member Tauras Rutkūnas announced that 62 people sentenced in various terms wanted to participate in the Seimas elections.
“Many candidates did not say that they had to be tried abroad, but they did not have to,” he said.
According to CEC member Svetlana Misevičienė, the fact that candidates do not have to provide a criminal record abroad is a loophole.
“The equality of candidates is not guaranteed, because there are candidates who have committed crimes abroad, but they are not on that list. Those crimes were committed in such a way that if a voter knew what crimes he had committed, he would not really vote for him, “he said.
According to the Seimas Election Law, every candidate must make a public statement if he has been convicted of a crime by a sentence of a Lithuanian court that entered into force on March 11, 1990. Candidates must also indicate in the questionnaire if you have ever been convicted of a felony or very serious crime. This requirement also covers sentences passed abroad.
The candidate must write on the form the place of the conviction, the state, the name of the court, the date and all the crimes for which he has been convicted.
The Seimas elections will be held on October 11.
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