COLLAPSE: The Labor Party, headed by Loreta Grauziniene (pictured above), removed all of its ministers from the coalition government on May 31.
Lithuania's Labor Party decided to remove all of its ministers from government during a presidium on May 31, after President Valdas Adamkus voiced no confidence in two ministers.
The move has triggered the beginning of yet another government collapse. Party chairwoman Loreta Grauziniene said all ministers would step down, including two that had been recently reprimanded by President Valdas Adamkus on May 30, Culture Minister Vladimiras Prudnikovas and Health Minister Zilvinas Padaiga. The president had suggested some major government reforms and a vote of confidence.
Grauziniene called the president's words, "intolerable interference" with the government's work. Prudnikovas had used public funds in order to arrange foreign performances by his wife and daughter. Padaiga said he had taken money from the Labor Party. On May 31, Adamkus said he would meet with Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, who heads the Cabinet, to further discuss the crisis.
Brazauskas, the head of the Social Democratic Party, which along with the National Farmers' Union and the Labor Party had, until the collapse this morning, ruled the country in an unsteady coalition, said his party would not take responsibility for forming a new coalition. Such responsibility, he said, would be borne by "those who destroyed" the current one.
