Lithuanian elections: winners & losers

  • 2000-10-12
  • Rokas M. Tracevskis
- Rolandas Paksas graduated from Vilnius Engineering and Construction Institute in 1979 and Leningrad Civil Aviation Academy in 1983. He twice became the acrobatic flight champion of the Soviet Union and has many times been the champion of Lithuania. From 1985 until 1992, Paksas was head of the Darius and Girenas flight club in Vilnius. From 1992 until his appointment as mayor of Vilnius in 1997, Paksas was president and co-owner of the construction company Restako.

Paksas, member of the Conservative Party, became prime minister in May, 1999. After six months, he refused to sign a deal with the U.S. Williams on the privatization of the Lithuanian oil sector, stating that it is financially harmful for the country. Conservative Party leader Vytautas Landsbergis had a different opinion. Paksas resigned and left the Conservative Party. Last year, he joined the tiny Liberal Union, and this party became one of the most popular in Lithuania.

- Arturas Paulauskas became the first prosecutor general of Lithuania after it reestablished independence in March, 1990. Later, he was a lawyer.

On Jan. 22, 1998, independent candidate Paulauskas won 49.22 percent of vote in the second round of the presidential election. His rival American pensioner Valdas Adamkus got 49.96 percent of vote.

Two years ago Paulauskas established his own political party - the New Union (Social Liberals). Paulauskas' former rival Adamkus expressed moral support to the party when it joined the loose pre-election bloc of liberal parties named the New Policy.

- Algirdas Brazauskas, backed by national liberation movement Sajudis, was elected head of the Lithuanian Communist Party in 1988. In 1989 his party split from the Communist Party of the USSR and that split is considered as one of the major turning points in Lithuania's drive towards independence and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. Angry Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrived to Vilnius, but Brazauskas did not surrender to Gorbachev's pressure to return to the Soviet Communist Party.

Brazauskas was elected to Parliament in 1990 and voted for the act of re-establishment of Lithuania's independence. In the same year, he became deputy prime minister of the first government of the reestablished independent Lithuania. The Lithuanian Communist Party changed its name to the Democratic Labor Party.

In 1993 Brazauskas got 60 percent of the vote in the presidential election. Brazauskas suspended his membership in the party and has been a non-party man since. In 1994 Brazauskas became the first Baltic states' president to send an official letter to the NATO secretary general asking to accept Lithuania into the alliance.

In 1997 President Brazauskas announced that he would not run for a second term though polls predicted victory for him. In 2000 Brazauskas became the leader of the Social Democratic Coalition, created by four left-wing political parties. Brazauskas himself wasn't a candidate for Parliament, but promised to take the post of prime minister if leftists won the election.

- Vytautas Landsbergis, professor of music, became a leader of the national liberation movement Sajudis in the late 1980s. He was elected to Parliament in 1990 and became parliamentary chairman. This Parliament, dominated by Sajudis and the independent Lithuanian Communist Party, proclaimed re-establishment of Lithuania's independence on March 11, 1990.

In the 1992 parliamentary elections, the Democratic Labor Party smashed Landsbergis' right-wing political bloc and Landsbergis became leader of the opposition. In 1993 he became chairman of the newly created Fatherland Union (Lithuania's Conservatives), called the Conservative Party in everyday political life.

In the 1997 presidential election's first round, two independent candidates - lawyer Arturas Paulauskas and retired U.S. environmentalist Valdas Adamkus, left Landsbergis in third position. In the 1996 parliamentary election, the Conservative Party won an absolute majority of seats in Parliament and Landsbergis became parliamentary chairman again.