The election ended the weekend to the detriment of the TS-LKD: what changed the leg of the rulers

Jolanta Margaitienė, a candidate nominated by the Lithuanian National Christian Democratic Union (TS-LKD), came second in the elections, although she took the lead after the first round. According to data from the Central Electoral Commission, the results of both electoral rounds are as follows: 59.24% voted for V. Simelis. voters, and 39.66 percent voted for J. Margaitienė. Radviliškės. The total turnout in this election was 35.27 percent.

Cepononi: This is a weak mayor

Former district mayor A. Čepononis did not comment on voter support for V. Simelis. According to him, people in municipal elections often choose personalities rather than parties, so according to A. Čepononis, the people of Radviliškis do not necessarily associate them with a specific party of the Greens.

“People still choose personalities,” said A. Čepononis.

A politician who became mayor after V. Simelis, when asked how he evaluates the new mayor’s ability to run the district, said he is a weak mayor.

“I could say that he is a weak mayor. I went after him and found a very low-downfall self-government system with huge debts, but the will of the people is the will of the people, ”said A. Čepononis.

He considered that the name V. Simelis could have caused homesickness in the residents: he ruled the district more than a dozen years ago.

“For some voters who are nostalgic for another system, this may have worked,” said A. Čepononis.

He also said that he did not believe the election could be a serious sign for those who lost their district seat to TS-LKD.

“Definitely not,” assured the politician.

A. Čepononis also drew attention to the low turnout.

“If 9 thousand people came to vote in Radviliškis. Out of 30 thousand. And only that part elects the leader, only that part will be represented, and then everyone else will say ‘what is happening here?”, Noted the former mayor of Radviliškis. , who evaluated the election results as a natural change.

Jastramski suggests not drawing far-reaching conclusions: self-government votes for personality

In turn, Mažvydas Jastramskis, Associate Professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Sciences (VU TSPMI), Vilnius University Delphi He said that no far-reaching conclusions should be drawn after the Radviliškis district mayor elections.

“It is very likely that the positions of the Union of the Fatherland were due to the person of Mayor A. Čepononis. Actually, this is not a strength of the Conservative Party, it was a strength of the Christian Democrats in the past; adding that level , it would not be possible to directly conclude that the conservatives are already here, where they get a lot of votes, “said Jastramskis.

He also echoed A. Čepononis’s observation that in self-government voters do not usually vote for party, but for personality. However, M. Jastramskis pointed out that the newly elected mayor does not have his own faction on the municipal council.

“I wonder how people vote for the election of a mayor who nominally doesn’t even have a faction on the council. I wonder when he will be successful when he has 25 councilors with him, 11 of them conservative. It is possible to do it anyway, but it will cost work, ”said the political scientist.

According to M. Jastramskis, the impression is that V. Simelis does not have a natural support in the council. The new mayor of Radviliškis, after the election results became clear, BNS said it would seek to reshape the ruling coalition. The ruling majority in Radviliškis is currently made up of conservatives with “peasants”.

“I have the impression that some people don’t think about who is on the council when voting and that the directly elected mayor is only as strong as the support he has on the council,” said the VU TSPMI associate professor.

The expert also pointed out that in the last elections for municipal mayors, when A. Čepononis won, V. Simelis himself did not even stand as a candidate.

“At this point, we can’t compare how he would have looked with Ceponin,” Jastramski said.

At the same time, he pointed out that these elections demonstrated once again that in the direct election of mayors, some people do not even reach the polls in the second round of elections, especially if the candidate they support did not reach the second round. .

According to M. Jastramskis, there may be more reasons for low voter turnout.

“When elections are held in a municipality, it is a local event and there is no importance of the electoral environment that occurs when elections are held in 60 municipalities at the same time and there are discussions about it at the national level,” said VU. Associate Professor at TSPMI.

When asked if this election should be a signal for the TS-LKD, Mr. Jastramski pointed out that uniting the people in principle against a conservative candidate is not difficult.

“The point is that it is not very difficult to unite people against the conservatives. “I don’t know what they were campaigning for inside, but maybe they could have taken advantage of the fact that the Conservatives are in the national government, they could be associated with some dissatisfaction,” he said.

However, according to M. Jastramskis, the main opposition parties of the TS-LKD should not be happy: their candidates did not win either.

“A man from the Green Party. I would be surprised by the joy of some of the main opposition parties because they did not win either. The mayor is not from the Socdems, nor from the peasants, nor from the Labor Party. Here we must not cheer either one or the other, it is confirmed once again that the role of the personality of a politician is greatly strengthened in direct mayoral elections, “added M. Jastramskis.

Urbonaitė: the new mayor will have to seek support from the city council

At that time, the political scientist of the Mykolas Romeris University (MRU) Rima Urbonaitė, when evaluating the results of the polls in Radviliškis, also emphasized the activity of the population that cast a low vote.

“If we look at the number of voters with whom the new mayor has received a mandate, they are not even 6 thousand, when he had the right to vote and almost 31 thousand were registered on the electoral roll. voters. There are so many voters and less than 6,000 become mayors, ”said R. Urbonaitė.

The political scientist compared the first and second rounds of these elections: after the first round, 30.66 percent had voted for J. Margaitienė. voters and V. Simelis, 22.3 percent. voters. According to R. Urbonaitė, this shows how parties can mobilize voters against the TS-LKD candidate in the second round.

“If Margaitienė had 3.3 thousand. in one round, he had 3.9 thousand in the next round. What we have: The number of voters increased by about 600, while the Lithuanian Green Party candidate managed to increase the number of his voters by more than 3,000. I think this is a sign, ”emphasized the MRU political scientist.

According to her, this is a signal for the TS-LKD, another illustration that this party cannot mobilize the voters of other political forces.

This means that the Green candidate voted by the votes of the other candidates who did not go to the second round and doubled their support by the number of votes cast by the voters. I think this is a signal to the conservatives that the problem of the second round, because Ms Margaitienė was in the first round and she was the first, (…) she is. The candidate who won first place in the first round loses in the second round because the conservatives cannot gather other votes, ”said R. Urboanitė.

When asked whether such election results could have been influenced by national political factors when the Conservatives are now in power, the political scientist answered affirmatively.

“I am not ruling out the fact that the vote is not taking place in a vacuum, but in a certain political context. Naturally, that political context is not just about a particular municipality and what is happening within it.” You evaluate the current government very badly, it is natural that skepticism also arises for the candidate, “said the expert.

In turn, V. Simelis, also attracted the attention of R. Urbonaitė, was the mayor of the Radviliškis district municipality for a long time.

“It just came to our knowledge then. When he returns after a break, of course, he can start to play some novel factor. I think he now has quite favorable circumstances, which he took very badly of,” said R. Urbonaitė.

He also reminded M. Jastramskis that it can be difficult for the new district mayor to find support in the city council.

“This is a situation that we always anticipate and evaluate as a rather negative consequence of the current system: there may be a mayor from a political force, and the majority of the council may have a completely different political force, and the mayor becomes completely lonely, you need to seek allies. We fully understand that it is difficult to find allies in politics, “emphasized R. Urbonaitė.

The post of mayor of the Radviliškis district was vacated when the mayor of the municipality, A. Čepononis, was elected to the Seimas last year. He ran the municipality from 2003 to 2011. and 2015-2020 V. Simelis will also be the mayor of Radviliškis for the first time: he ran the district in 1995-2003.