Lopata: There is some confusion in the state about his future

With a member of the new Seimas, who entered Parliament with the list of the Liberal Movement, Doctor of History, political scientist, 1998–1999. Advisor to Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius on State and Human Rights Issues, 2015-2016. Portal of R. Lopata, Chief Consultant of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat Algirdas Butkevičius Delfi.lt He spoke about the work of Seimas in the conditions of a pandemic, the new government, foreign policy and the future of Lithuania.

– The mandate of the newly elected Seimas is gradually gaining momentum. In recent years, he has followed the political processes of the other side, as a political scientist commenting on and analyzing the work of the Seimas and other political institutions. What are your first impressions of participating in the internal processes of the Seimas?

– Frankly, I didn’t even think. Everything goes automatically, the routine gets bogged down. Of course, there are many things called procedural, those natural. You have to do everything according to the rules as it should be.
The effectiveness of the solutions is another matter. But for now, the kitchen looks normal. Only the details now depend on the general situation: both the pandemic and the pending budget challenges, and other such things. Now there is some concentration and search for solutions.

But what puts the most pressure on the entire population of Lithuania is the quarantine environment and creates additional problems for the work process. People are more used to working with open faces, and now you see them through computer screens.

– Does moving some jobs to a remote space complicate the work process?

– Live communication and lively discussions, even in committees, have some advantages over contactless communication. But everything happens, there are no big problems to adapt to everything and make decisions until now.

– How do you, as a representative of the ruling coalition, rate the inaugural government and its leader Ingrid Šimonytė?

– Hard to say. The general mood that prevails in the Seimas, whether or not he belongs to the ruling coalition, is to look at the Prime Minister with respect for him and his powers, his leadership and his personality in general. I don’t think it really does.

As will be the case with ministers, time will tell. I believe that the government’s work began under difficult circumstances. There really can be mistakes, who can’t avoid them? But everyone should catch up and everything should be fine.

Of course, the atmosphere itself is now such that there is more negativity, negativity throughout our lives. You should wait and pay more attention to those lights at the end of the tunnel, they really are. That light will soon shine as the post-pandemic period inevitably approaches. We will have changed a bit, but everything will return to normal.

– What relationship can we expect between the Prime Minister, the Government and President Gitan Nausėda? Will that relationship be sustainable?

– Predicting is difficult, because politics is not a scheme, they are faster situations. Much will depend on the situations and their resolution. Both the Government and the President, in my opinion, understand that the situation requires cooperation. There should be inter-institutional cooperation and the two institutions should work together. So far, I have no doubt that it could be otherwise.

– Don’t you see potential tensions in, say, foreign policy?

– Definitely not in the near future. On the one hand, there may be some disagreement about the appointment of some officials or similar matters. But I had to hear the Prime Minister answer the questions before the Government approved it. When asked how he sees the constitutional issues of representing Lithuania and the Republic of Lithuania in the European Council, his answer was clear enough: there should be no moves or changes in the near future. I would say that even this topic will not cause tension in the near future.

– When presenting the Government’s program, we heard that the foreign policy of this ruling majority will be a foreign policy of value. What are the main guidelines for thinking about this value in foreign policy?

– The guideline is one: strong protection and representation of national interests. Specifically, the representation of national interests will depend on how Lithuania will be able to represent those national interests through coalitions in the European Union (EU). If we look at the formation of coalitions within the EU in the last term, defending one or another important issue for Lithuania, then there will be a change here.

And what will become of him in real life will have to wait.

– How does the question of Astrava and Belarus in general look in the context of values ​​abroad?

– As for Astrava, we had two problems. One problem was external, that we did not defend our interests precisely in the formation of coalitions within the EU. The second problem was the internal problems when we saw the negotiations of the Ministry of Energy with the Latvians, which in principle denied what the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania had adopted through the Law of No Purchase of Electricity in Astrava.

Given that such actions by the Ministry of Energy have been harshly criticized by the current Minister of Energy, I think there will certainly be clarity on this issue now within the country. The national interest in not hiring is very obvious, clear and important. I have no doubt that the Ministry of Energy, and with it the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, knows this. What really remains now is to work with the EU allies.

– With regard to Belarus, do you emphasize action at the EU level? Would it be possible and to what extent to seek bilateral cooperation formats in the near future?

– There are three factors here, maybe even four, with the same EU in mind again. The first three would be, firstly, that we do not recognize the election results and that Aliaksandr Lukashenko is the legitimate leader of Belarus. In other words, what is the political relationship with an unrecognized regime is obvious. But there is this so-called economic cooperation factor. It will depend a lot here, not only on our self-determination, but also on the self-determination of the EU and the various sanctions. What we have done many times when we said before that our foreign policy is a policy of values, we must support and respect democracies, the free self-determination of nations, but that is why we have committed ourselves to the regime.

Third, we must really think about ways to support the opposition movement, in the hope that it will actually express the wishes, aspirations and hopes of the entire Belarusian nation or most of it. And here too we had painful lessons when, instead of supporting the opposition, we sometimes betrayed them.

– In recent years, when reading National Security Threat Assessment Reports, we have seen an increasing focus on China and the potential risks associated with that country. The government program pays little attention to the role of China, why?

– The complexity of the Chinese factor and the potential threats, as well as certain opportunities, are more widely understood by the EU itself and by individual EU countries. The answer to this would be the same: a coalition with the EU countries on China. In an unequivocal way, as this line of naming and evaluating threats and the Chinese threat overlaps less and less in all areas, we are the EU, so we draw strength from it and, together with it, as a force, against another force in search of solutions.

– A new Future Commission is being created in the Seimas and you will probably be its president. What will be the future of Lithuania four years from now, when the current Seimas ends his term?

– Yes, the Seimas is approaching the creation of the Committee of the Future, which will probably be chaired. When we start choosing with the committee members, we will see how we envision that future for Lithuania.

Oh really, there are a lot of ingredients, a lot of factors, it’s important to have those benchmarks that we align with. It seems to me that there is some confusion in the state with the future of the state. There are a number of strategic documents that often do not correlate with each other, there is no connection between them. No connection, no prospects. This situation is a bit worrying, but I think the time will come when these things need to be fixed. Also, in fact, during this next term, we are already seeing, by law, a new state plan of progress: no longer 2020-2030, but 2020-2050.

But then again, we live in a world where there are times when predictions to explain what we’ll look like in four or more years won’t help.