VILNIUS - Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas has refuted a forecast by the Economist Intelligence Unit, part of the influential British business publication The Economist, that his minority government will not last until next year's parliamentary elections.
The EIU's "Lithuania Outlook" report, which was published July 25, said, "Tensions between the TS [Homeland Union Party] and the LSP [Social Democratic Party] have risen, and the government is unlikely to last in its present form until the parliamentary election due in October 2008."
"Such prognoses were made last year as well, when the government was confirmed. The prognoses didn't come true," Kirkilas said an interview on Zinius Radijas the day after the report was released.
The current government 's Lithuania's fourteenth since independence in 1991 's has been led by Social Democrat Kirkilas since 2006. The prime minister's post and seven ministerial posts belong to the Social Democrats, three to the Farmers' Union, two to Liberal Centrists and one to the Civil Democrats.
The Social Democrats' minority government has 58 seats in the parliament, but it is formally supported by the opposition Homeland Union, which has 24 seats, thus creating a majority in the 141-member parliament.
MPs belonging to the Social Democrats could not be reached for comment on the EIU report, but Povilas Zarnauskas, Secretary of the Lithuania Social Democrats Youth Union International, said he doesn't think the coalition government will split up before next year's elections.
"I believe we have a lot of chance to win. We are the biggest and most powerful," he said.
The Social Democrats won the majority of seats in 19 cities during city council elections last February.
For his part, Deputy Chairman Arunas Grumades of the Lithuanian Center Party said he cannot see any "dramatic or unexpected" changes in the parliamentary coalition government.
"The government is secure. I think the only thing they need to do is present a new budget to the parliament," he said.
In addition to disagreeing with the report's political predictions, the Prime Minister also took issue with economic growth forecasts contained within it. July's EIU report estimates that GDP growth in Lithuania will be 7.5 percent in 2007 and 6.7 percent in 2008. Perhaps confusing matters was a BNS report on July 26 stating that the EIU's GDP numbers for 2006, 2007 and 2008 were given as 7.3, 6.5 and 6.4 percent respectively.
"The growth of our economy this year already exceeds 8 percent. Somehow [updated] Lithuanian statistics do not get into the foreign media. We think that the speed of the economical growth next year won't go slow," Kirkilas said in the interview. Indeed a report by Statistics Lithuania on July 27 said that growth during the first half of this year was 8.1 percent.
Aidan Manktelow, the expert at the Economist Intelligence Unit who wrote the report, refutes the claim that Lithuanian statistics don't appear in the foreign media. "Lithuanian statistics are followed abroad," he told The Baltic Times.
"I suspect there has been a lot of concern among rating agencies such as Standard & Poor's, IMF, and so the government is sensitive and they think of them as too pessimistic," Manktelow said.
However, he denied that the predictions of the government's demise were based on these numbers.
"We are not saying that the decline in the parliamentary government is currently performance-related. When we say we don't expect [the government] to last before the next election [that] is based on local newspaper polls and political calculations of the respective parties, The Homeland Union and Social Democrats," Manktelow said.
Kirkilas acknowledged that it may not be easy for the government to last until the next parliamentary elections, but "democracy is democracy, anything can happen," he was quoted by BNS as saying.
With a "revolving door" policy seeming to operate for Lithuanian governments over the last decade, Kirkilas' administration has brought a modicum of stability when it was sorely needed. After a year in power, only only one minister has been changed and most commentators agree that Kirkilas has done a good job.
Ironically he was praised in the EIU's January report as an unsung hero whose "minority administration has surpassed all expectations."
