VILNIUS - Former President Valdas Adamkus will face MP Kazimiera Prunskiene in what is expected to be a cliff-hanging second round of presidential elections on June 27.
Adamkus, who captured the largest portion of the vote in the June 13 poll that eliminated three other competitors, was given little time to celebrate his victory as the freshest polls revealed that he held only a paper-thin margin over Prunskiene.
A voters' survey conducted by the Transcom pollster showed Adamkus with 50.3 percent support over Prunskiene's 49.7 percent, making the upcoming race a dead heat.
In the first round, which was held concurrently with Lithu-ania's first-ever election to the European Parliament, Adamkus gathered 30.7 percent of the vote. Prunskiene barely clinched second place, capturing 21.4 percent and slipping past third-place candidate Petras Austrevicius, who ended with a 19.3 percent showing.
Finishing fourth and fifth, respectively, were Social Security and Labor Minister Vilija Blinkeviciute with 16.6 percent and Social Democratic candidate Ceslovas Jursenas with 11.9 percent.
The geographical distribution of votes mostly reflected the cleavage dubbed "the two Lithuanias" by analysts following the Paksas-Adamkus standoff, with educated and urban voters plumping for Adamkus and rural, disadvantaged voters voicing their support for Prunskiene.
Adamkus gained the majority of his support in cities, polling as high as 44.5 percent in his native Kaunas, while Prunskiene did best in Lithuania's impoverished and ethnically diverse eastern districts. She even amassed 71.3 percent of the vote in the largely Russian town of Visaginas.
Voter participation, including postal voting, was tallied at 46 percent, below average for presidential elections.
While the elections are being held to replace former President Rolandas Paksas, who was impeached by the Seimas (Lithuania's parliament) on April 6 with charges of grossly violating the constitution, the first-round results differed little from the December 2002 poll that eventually swept him to power.
Prunskiene, who served as one of the country's first prime ministers in 1990 but later lost support amid allegations of collaboration with the KGB, has made a startling comeback to politics as one of the few politicians not directly linked to Paksas but who opposed his impeachment.
Her success in the election has been viewed as the fruits of shrewd exploitation of Paksas' traditional power base, composed largely of voters who feel most disenfranchised from national political life.
Prunskiene received an extra boost prior to the election. Paksas, who was prevented from running after a May Constitutional Court decision banned him from holding the office for life, supported her candidacy.
Still, the ousted president nonetheless voiced his discontent with standing on the sidelines on the day of the elections.
"I think the campaign was boring. It would have been much more interesting if I would have been allowed to run," Paksas told reporters as he slipped his ballot in the voting box.
While Paksas is expected to throw his grudging support to Prunskiene once again for the second round, other major political players remained undecided well after the votes of the first round had been tallied.
In an interview given to Lithuanian Radio on June 15, Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said that his party, which holds the largest number of seats in Seimas, had yet to decide whom it would support. While Brazauskas and Adamkus were once political rivals, analysts had largely expected reconciliation between the two, widely regarded as respective leaders of the left and right wings of Lithuanian politics.
The upstart Labor Party, which trounced rival parties in the EP elections, remained an even more potent wild card for the presidential poll. With Austrevicius, who secured Labor's support for the first round, out of the running, signals pointed to the possibility that the Labor Party's huge political machine would throw its weight behind Prunskiene.
Jolanta Blazyte, wife of Labor Party chairman Viktor Uspaskich, reportedly wired 20,000 litas (5,800 euros) to Prunskiene's campaign account soon after the conclusion of the first round, and Prunskiene appeared with Uspaskich on television on the morning of June 15.
Nonetheless, as The Baltic Times went to press, the Labor Party had yet to make an official announcement of support.
"It would be too early at this point to make any comment about negotiations," said Justina Vitkauskiate, party press secretary.
In spite of the potential for a "repeat defeat" for Adamkus, who served as president from 1998 until 2003, members of the former president's camp shrugged off the concerns raised by both voting patterns and survey results.
"Our own surveys show President Adamkus with at least a 10-point lead. This was a telephone survey where only Lietuvos Telekomas customers were called. We believe that had the survey sample been larger, it would have reflected the larger lead," said Marius Lukosiunas, Adamkus' press secretary.
