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If these amendments to the Constitution are approved in the fall, it would allow President Rolandas Paksas, who was indicted in 2004, to run again not only for the Seimas, but also for the presidency.
After the presentation, 73 members of the Seimas voted in favor of the draft amendment to article 74 of the Constitution, who voted against and abstained.
Brief discussion
During the discussion in the Seimas, Algimantas Dumbrava, a member of the Lithuanian Union of Peasants and Greens (LVŽS), asked why “in Lithuania we only imagine ourselves when there are threats of sanctions”; according to him, several votes were held a few years ago and parliamentarians Member of the Seimas, not president.
One of the promoters of the project, the leader of the Seimas Future Committee, Liberal Raimundas Lopata, commented that a consensus had been reached between various political forces due to international circumstances and the reluctance to receive sanctions.
“I think there are all kinds of political calculations. In this case, why now? We are beginning to speak more and more often, louder and more fairly about human rights violations in our eastern neighbors. “… In order to talk about it honestly, we need to eliminate unfinished work that hasn’t been done in a long time,” Lopata said.
A co-author of the law, liberal Armin Lydeka, asked for clarification as to why the 10-year term was chosen.
Lopata said he thought the deadline was long enough. “It sounds like ‘at least ten years’, that is, legislative acts can provide other terms,” Lopata said.
The head of the Future Commission, R. Lopata, has previously said about this project that a consensus has been reached among representatives of different political forces on the proposal to implement the decision of the ECHR.
Earlier, representatives of the Seimas factions said they awaited voter awareness, saying that a person could not separate himself from political life until death. You can read more about the positions of politicians on this issue here.
Aims to avoid penalties
The project is presented to implement the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case of Rolandas Paksas, who was removed from the post of president, against Lithuania.
The amendment to article 74 of the Constitution proposes to establish that a person dismissed by impeachment may occupy an office related to the oath provided for in the Constitution when at least ten years have elapsed since the dismissal.
This draft amendment to the Constitution was registered by 48 members of the Seimas from the ruling and opposition parliamentary factions. The providers include Seimas spokesperson Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, the head of the Seimas Liberal Future Committee Raimundas Lopata, as well as representatives of the conservatives, the Freedom Party, “peasants”, social democrats and “workers”.
In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the current lifetime participation ban in the Seimas elections for the dissolved president Paksas is disproportionate.
Without in any way adopting constitutional amendments that would open the way for R. Paksas to the elections, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which oversees the execution of judicial decisions in Strasbourg, has applied the so-called enhanced supervision procedure to Lithuania. .
R. Paksas was removed from the post of president in 2004 and since then he cannot be elected head of the country or a member of the Seimas.
The Constitutional Court recognized that R. Paksas had broken his oath and had seriously violated the Constitution by exceptionally granting Lithuanian citizenship to his financial sponsor Yuri Borisov. The court has clarified that a person who has lost his position through impeachment cannot, for life, hold a position that requires a constitutional oath. According to him, to modify this provision it is necessary to modify the Constitution.
