Biggest Party: In A Severe Crisis – Few Potential Rescuers, Prospects Still Blurred

Paluck announced Friday that he was resigning from the LSDP leaders..

Who will temporarily direct the game will be decided by the Socdem at the next council meeting.

G.Paluckas said that he would offer to do so to Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, MEP.

New periodic elections for the party president are planned for the spring.

Juozas Olekas, another member of the European Parliament (EP), has already announced that he aspires to become the head of the LSDP.

The decision was not surprising

Jūratė Novagrockienė, a political scientist at the General Jonas Zemaitis Lithuanian Military Academy, was not surprised by G. Paluckas’s decision to resign from the LSDP presidents.

Their move was said to have been long delayed.

“It just came to our attention then. Maybe not entirely visible. On the other hand, he may not have felt quite right himself. He had to resign after the elections, as the Social Democrats suffered such a poor result. It is It is common in politics for leaders to resign after, say, a party that fails one way or another in an election, ”he said.

Where was the problem for G. Paluck, the LSDP president elected in 2017?

Previously, he was seen as quite a promising politician: he held the position of executive secretary of the party, worked as deputy mayor of Vilnius, led the party out of a supposedly unacceptable coalition with “peasants”, promised a new social democratic vision and renewal.

However, the recent elections, especially to the Seimas, did not prove to him personally (he lost to the conservative Edmundas Pupinis, who was elected parliamentarian according to the list in the single-member constituency of Utena), nor to the party.

According to J. Novagrockienė, several factors were formed here.

Initially, there was a favorable political situation. G. Paluckas was more visible in the public space, a series of politicians come to great politics from the municipal level.

Also, it must be remembered that at that time, the LSDP was going through a crisis, possibly even an identity, a leadership issue emerged.

In such circumstances, according to the political scientist of the Lithuanian Military Academy General Jonas Zemaitis, a man appeared who wanted to lead, assume responsibilities and restore the ideological attitudes of social democracy.

“But what happened? He, on the one hand, was not elected to any office and, in fact, he appeared very unsuccessfully in person, wherever he was isolated, suffered one or another defeat everywhere. He did not manage to obtain a visible status, clearly defined and supported by the voters. And this, I think, is one of the reasons for its failure, “said J. Novagrockienė.

He failed to obtain a visible, clearly defined and voter-supported status.

Total degradation and fall

Speaking about Social Democrats, Bernaras Ivanovas, associate professor at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU), said that he was a bit biased because he had sympathy for classical social democracy and the welfare state.

“I am very sad to see what is happening to LSDP, because in the last decade or more, it has been a total decline and decline. And it doesn’t matter who is in charge there: those “beavers” are in charge of some kind, they are in charge of churches and Bernatons, they are in charge of paluckians of different hair. There is no big difference “, – the political scientist spared no criticism.

According to B.Ivanovas, G.Paluckas tried to take a left turn after the LSDP was in power with the government of Algirdas Butkevičius.

Some of the leaders of the Social Democrats have admitted that in 2012-2016 their policies drifted away from the Social Democrats.

According to Vytautas University associate professor Magnus, G. Paluckas tried to save the party by flirting with various “very strange ideologies.” Collapsed.

Furthermore, the political scientist saw that the now-resigned president of the LSDP had done everything possible to hold on to power. But he did not succeed, the Socdems supposedly resisted him.

“But that reluctance is also very, very sad, because the prospects are still bad. Anyway, that party didn’t take it away, it took it out, but the alternative, you know, like a fork, is the beavers themselves.

But that would take off, would take off. He stood to the end and kicked in every way – all sorts of things, as we have seen, he wrote petitions, he wrote letters. I do not help. Because, as I understand it, the party activist did not support their twists and turns, especially to the left. But it still took off. Now we will see what happens next, “Ivanov said.

At the same time, he pointed out that G. Paluckas had to resign immediately after the Seimas elections, because “the fiasco was terrible.”

The political scientist also considered that this could be an assessment for those who left the LSDP.

“He didn’t manage to stay a certain distance from them, from all those stingrays and similar characters that just took off and fell like the head of a fish. But, that means, not until the end, and now, it seems to me, they will return,” said B Ivanov.

Who will become the new leader?

When asked if he would see a new LSDP assistant, J. Novagrockienė said he was under the impression that, for example, the mayor of the Jonava district, Mindaugas Sinkevičius, was satisfied with his current position and was not claiming leadership positions.

It seems to the political scientist of the Lithuanian Military Academy General Jonas Žemaitis that V. Blinkevičiūtė, who is in the ranking of the most popular politicians, feels very comfortable working in the EP.

As J. Novagrockienė observes, the honorary president of the LSDP Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis is known, but not popular in the party itself.

And therefore it remains the only possible solution – J. Olekas. (…) On the other hand, he really has a certain authority and that good, positive, positive streak that is related to his participation in the reconstruction of the LSDP and to having an independent line, unlike the ex-communists, that is, the Party Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party.

That, I think, adds up some points in one way or another, “said the political scientist, adding that this politician was elected to the EP and was a relatively successful Minister of National Defense, with the exception of the” golden spoons. ” scandal.

Speaking of the prospects for the LSDP, J. Novagrockienė noted that the party should focus more on social policy than business relations.

It is important to unite regional divisions that think very differently.

“Because it is a party that is geographically well established in Lithuania. But the chapters are very different in mind. And I think some support the line of G. Kirkilas,” said J. Novagrockienė, recalling that the leader of the social workers returned to talk about the unification of parties.

But the chapters actually have a very different mindset. And I think the part supports the G. Kirkilas line.

In addition to coming together first within the LSDP, convincing the regions that there is a perspective, he points out that the second step may be the consolidation of the forces of the left.

As once, the National Union united cricketers, political prisoners and deportees, nationalists under its wing.

Wizards still don’t see

According to Ivanov, it is easier for the LSDP to find those who could not be leaders than vice versa.

In their eyes, there is no hope that VPAndriukaitis or J.Olekas can change anything.

It is difficult to say anything about the potential candidates from the regions.

Above all because, in the opinion of the VMU associate professor, the future president needs strong administrative support from the party itself.

“And the party seems to me to be going through a really very difficult time when the party seems to be falling drastically now. I think it will survive. But until now, I imagine, from the perspective of a few years, there could hardly be someone more courageous who began to reform that party, ”emphasized B. Ivanov, who believes that these people were in the old LSDP, but their age is no longer to do something.

Speaking of the young side of the Socdems, the political scientist also has little hope.

He recalled that, for example, in 2016, the LSDP, which was still working in the ruling coalition in the government of Saulius Skvernelis, appointed Julius Pagoja to the Ministers of Justice.

He was appointed but left without starting work, as it turned out to hide the fact that he had been punished for driving while intoxicated.. It is true that it no longer belongs to the LSDP.

“So in total, I couldn’t name the person who would take and transform LSDP by putting his hand on his heart. But maybe the time will come when we see this.

But it probably won’t be yet. This year, I’d be wrong, but we probably won’t see it because it’s still that old form of error. A good fallacy still awaits this party, “commented B. Ivanov.