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The Association Bill, which awakens many passions in society, finally reached the Seimas hall on Tuesday, but has ended its journey so far: there was no vote to approve it after its presentation. It was decided that this legislation needed to be improved.
63 MPs voted in favor of the long bill, 58 against and seven abstained. Unsurprisingly, the controversial proposal did not receive the support even of all the rulers.
Only representatives of the Freedom Party, one of its main proponents, voted in favor of the draft after it was presented.
At the time, there was no consensus among conservatives torn by heated internal discussions. He was also absent from the Liberal Movement. Three of its representatives voted against or abstained.
The vote was also driven by the Social Democrats who promised to support the project. In the vote on the introduction of the Association Law in the field of the left, the votes were evenly distributed, with six in favor and five against. These losses were not compensated by even three unexpected peasant votes.
Immediately after the vote, it was debated whether the stumbled rulers would lick their wounds. How might the Freedom Party crash landing on the ground affect the relationship between the coalition partners?
He also remembered the plane
It is no coincidence that this behind-the-scenes vote on politics has been compared to the incident on Sunday, when a passenger plane flying from Athens to Vilnius forcibly landed in Minsk.
Lithuanian MPs condemned this very dangerous incident and the arrest of Belarusian journalist Ramanas Pratasevičius during his adoption in a session on Tuesday.
Therefore, Ieva Pakarklytė, the largest of the Freedom Faction, was surprised by the double standards applied in the Seimas after the vote on the Association Law.
According to I. Pakarklytė, it is ironic that before the vote on the legalization of the association, the parliamentarians adopted a resolution unanimously condemning human rights violations in Belarus, but with regard to human rights violations In our country, the results are already different.
Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius, one of the main proponents of the project, who was especially nervously awaiting the end of the vote, was saddened upon hearing the results and promised: “We will be back with this project in autumn.”
After the failed presentation of the project, Aušrinė Armonaitė, leader of the Freedom Party, said that she did not see where concessions could be made, but was convinced that this vote was not over yet.
Optimism did not dissipate
I.Pakarklytė did not hide that the vote was disappointing, but it also saw progress. He recalled that a similar project presented during the last legislature had received the support of only 29 parliamentarians.
The elder of the Liberty Faction welcomed this change and said that the improved bill would definitely be presented to the Seimas again, if not for this, then for the fall session: We still have a year and a half to do that. ” .
It seems that the Freedom Party has no intention of knocking on the coalition’s door after its painful vote. According to I. Pakarklytė, the coalition agreement remains valid and there is no need for hasty decisions.
By the way, when asked what political rookies learned from the failed vote, I. Pakarklytė was blunt: “That more people would vote for the Freedom Party in the next Seimas election.”
Will have to serve the electorate
But won’t Freedom Party voters turn away from political rookies without the promised legitimacy of a gender-neutral association a hundred days from now? Won’t it be difficult for the “liberals” to justify their presence in the leadership?
When asked about it, the largest of the faction of the Liberal Movement Eugenijus Gentvilas said that he was convinced that the Freedom Party should not withdraw from power, even if another project important to him failed, a proposal to decriminalize soft drugs. .
According to the Liberal, if the Freedom Party said “all the best” to the current coalition after possible failures, voters would also say “thank you, all the best”: “I don’t think they are doing it so stupidly because they just won’t stay. I only had those two questionnaires on the agenda. “
But the former politician assured that the Liberal Movement he represented was not happy with the first more pronounced setback of his closest rivals in the ruling coalition.
E. Gentvilas explained that recently a myth has been created that the proposal to legalize the association is exclusively the idea of ”liberties”: “The Freedom Party did not even exist when the representatives of the Liberal Movement proposed an even stricter version of the Asociation.”
It is true that the liberal is convinced that the Freedom Party, which took the initiative, made a tactical error by exaggerating same-sex couples when it came to speaking more restrained about the whole association.
Stabbed MPs
Speaking of other reasons why the law did not cross even the first threshold, E. Gentvilas mentioned homophobia and totalitarianism in the Seimas:
Also, there is a lot of totalitarianism here. Members of the Seimas believe that they can regulate human relationships in any way they imagine. I, the Liberal, am unhappy that people still cannot live the way they want, but must live as the government dictates. “
By the way, of the twelve members of the Liberal Movement faction, only eight voted for the Speaker of the Seimas Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen. However, the eldest of the liberal faction spoke more with other factions than with his own.
E. Gentvilas was a bit surprised by the vote of the conservatives, less by the behavior of the Social Democrats who promised to support the project: “They had told me that five of their people would not vote. That was the case. We have also told our partners that three or four members of our group will not vote.
The overall result was not surprising, perhaps unexpectedly, that more conservatives voted against the law than signed a referendum to legalize the association. “
Conservatives argued
Last week, thirteen members of the conservative Seimas faction, without the knowledge of the party leadership, proposed to ask the nation for its opinion on the Association Law.
On the eve of the vote, fierce disagreements erupted among conservatives over this proposal. The party’s leader, Gabrielius Landsbergis, made no secret that his colleagues’ idea of holding a referendum was wrong.
The party leadership accused the rebels of blowing up a Russian propaganda bagpipe, in addition to joining the so-called Family March. At the time, referendum supporters were outraged that the party leader had signed the bill without receiving its approval.
The Presidium of the Union of the Lithuanian Christian Homeland-Democrat, meeting on Monday, decided not to support the referendum. Some of its representatives later unofficially said that if the Seimas Association Bill had overcome the first barrier, the Conservatives’ unity could have faced serious challenges.
It is true that the largest of the conservative faction Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė told Lietuvos Rytas that disagreements among his colleagues on the legalization of the association should not further increase the existing divide.
According to the vice president of Seimas, due to the different opinions in the party, this issue is not included in its program, the doubts of the members of the faction were also known by the coalition partners.
R. Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė also believes that this vote should not damage the relations between the coalition partners: “The Coalition Agreement stipulates that efforts will be made to put the legalization of the association on the Seimas agenda. It was that effort, I hope it is visible and understandable ”.
In addition, the policy said that clear and unambiguous signals were sent from the coalition partners of his group to the coalition partners:
The conservative also questioned whether the position of politicians now expressed could fundamentally change in the fall, since many of them are already decided.
