VILNIUS - Lithuania's election campaign officially began on Sept. 10 's one month before the ballot 's when the Central Electoral Committee announced the candidate lists, though the real kick-off came three days later with a televized debate featuring all 15 running party leaders.
The debate, however, which was the first real opportunity for voters to see candidates in action and hear their promises, quickly turned into discussion on "who's-with-Victor and who's not."
As the flamboyant Labor Party leader Victor Uspaskich himself quipped during the debate, "You are lucky to have the Labor Party 's now you have something to talk about."
Ever since its founding last year, the Labor Party has led the polls by a wide margin 's sometimes twice higher than its nearest rival, the Social Democrats. Given this commanding lead, many parties have been afflicted with a kind of fatalism, while others can only jockey for a position close to Uspaskich. Indeed, these elections are all about whether a party opposes or is ready to work with Labor.
As of now, only the conservative Homeland Union has declared it would not form a coalition with the populist Labor Party. In fact conservatives claim that the Belarus-born Uspaskich is a threat to the nation.
Other parties, however, have ridden the fence, offering such answers as, "We have not yet considered a coalition option with the Labor Party."
Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said on Sept. 14 that his party, the Social Democrats, would not consider a coalition with Labor until after the elections.
Uspaskich only welcomes the distance, declaring that his party would prefer to be unaccompanied in the election.
"We are running in the election alone because we are new, and we don't want to be identified with others. After the election, we might negotiate with some people who have worked the best during the 14 years of independence," he said.
Vytautas Sustauskas, a leader of a minor Lithuanian Freedom Union, confirmed rumors about the Labor Party's intentions to keep out of the coalition. "I was told that there would be no coalitions, and that Uspaskich would buy the rest of the necessary seats to form a majority," he said.
But Uspaskich and the Labor Party could find themselves boxed in the corner no matter how they do on Oct. 10. Many strong parties, including the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Social Liberals, the Liberal-Center Party, the Homeland Union and the New Democracy Party, have not ruled out the possibility of modeling a wide coalition that would prevent the Laborites from forming a government.
Such a development would not be without precedent in the Baltics. Estonia's Center Party - the country's most popular - was effectively kept out of the ruling coalition despite winning last year's general elections.
According to ELTA editor Virgis Valentinavicius, there is little chance that other negligible parties could outdo or compete with the most influential political forces.
"The smaller parties speak about the problems of the ruling parties. Yet criticizing others and forgetting to talk about their own ideas does not assist in placing them among the most influential parties," said Valentinavicius.
During the debate, analysts commented that these elections were dominated by personalities and not political programs, to which party leaders replied by trying to shift the focus of the discussion.
Ceslovas Jursenas, who leads the Social Democrats/Social Liberals party list, mentioned the differential taxes as the coalition's top project. Despite the fact that the Social Democrats claimed the same strategy in the last parliamentary campaign, the party failed to pass progressive taxation legislation during its power hold.
Social Democrat opponents blamed the ruling coalition for expanding the broad division between Lithuania's social classes over recent years.
The Labor Party, for its part, expressed its concerns with EU funding, which it claimed required attentive supervision.
"I am interested in the money from the EU. We have to make sure it is implemented correctly," said Uspaskikh.
"The temptation of European money could be a big urge for a lot of parties. However, we need a systematical view. Our first priority shouldn't be the economic problems but the social ones," responded Andrius Kubilius, leader of the Homeland Union.
Analyst-moderators of the debate, however, expressed pessimism regarding the political programs.
"A sense of despair lingers in society. It is difficult to trust because true programs emerge only after the election campaign is over," said Valentinavicius.
