Grybauskaite’s two years in office

VILNIUS - On July 12, Dalia Grybauskaite celebrated the two year anniversary since her inauguration into the post of Lithuanian president in 2009. According to the survey of June 3-12, which was conducted by the social research company Vilmorus and published by the daily Lietuvos Rytas on June 18, 80.6 percent of Lithuania’s population estimates her activity positively, 7.6 percent negatively and 11.8 percent have no clear opinion about it. For comparison, PM Andrius Kubilius is estimated as follows, according to the same research: 10.9 percent of Lithuanians estimate him positively, 73.1 percent estimate him negatively and 16 percent have no opinion about his activity. Regardless, Kubilius has a high degree of public support from Grybauskaite in doing his unpopular day-to-day work. The phenomena of the popularity of Grybauskaite even provoked Lauras Bielinis, the former advisor of President Valdas Adamkus in 2006-2009 and political analyst who is quite critical towards Grybauskaite, to write a book titled Prezidente (the Lithuanian word for female president), which has been on sale in bookshops since the beginning of July. Never before has an acting Lithuanian president provoked the appearance of such a book.

“She achieved for herself her popularity and high ratings. In fact, her popularity in society is high and it so because of her communication style,” Bielinis told the daily Lietuvos Rytas. He described Grybauskaite’s communication style as “folksy.” Indeed, on July 8, Grybauskaite visited the archaeology festival in the town of Kernave and ate a boiled eye of a sheep there, stating in her usual simple style, “Everything is good for eating.”

Bielinis describes Grybauskaite as a very lonely president because she keeps her distance from the parliament, political parties and business people. She cherishes her independence and she is not a member of an alliance.
Grybauskaite is also famous for having an allergy to official partying, which she regards as a vanity – she never organizes parties (the presidential parties on the occasion of the Mindaugas Coronation Day for the Lithuanian elite and foreign ambassadors became history) and never attends them herself (no foreign embassy can expect her arrival at some national day celebration).

On July 6 and 7, Grybauskaite gave interviews to LTV (Lithuanian public TV) and Baltijos TV, which is a kind of rarity, because she is not a big fan of the explicit interview genre. During the interview for LTV, she said that the Lithuanian foreign policy vector of former presidents was “either the United States or nothing,” while her policy is more “balanced” and includes also the EU vector with special emphasis on cooperation with the Nordic states and the vector of good relations with all neighbors. Poland was not mentioned by name in her interviews. Speaking about Russia and Belarus, Grybauskaite said that those countries still have their Soviet mentality problems. No wonder that Russia was not even mentioned in her recent State of the Nation Address.

During both interviews Grybauskaite emphasized the necessity for the Lithuanian energy sector’s independence and, for the first time, spoke so positively about the new nuclear plant near Ignalina. Soon after her interviews, Latvian President Andris Berzins, who is unpopular in Latvia due to his alleged ties to controversial oligarch Aivars Lembergs, stated that Latvia will not participate in the new nuke project in Lithuania due to the Latvian financial situation. That came as no surprise because Lembergs has close business ties with Russia. The Latvian greens, backed by Lembergs, spoke against the nuke in Lithuania and in favor of the nuke in Kaliningrad district some months ago. Several years ago the Latvian greens vocally protested against the construction of the Moscow-irritating Lithuanian oil terminal in Butinge. However, the Lithuanian negotiations with potential Japanese-U.S. investors in the Ignalina nuke’s construction will go on.

Some people, knowing little about Lithuania, could expect some feminist agenda from Grybauskaite, but that’s not the case. The special equipment, which was created with feminist intention in Sweden and shown by political analyst Algimantas Cekuolis on LTV, allowing women to urinate standing up (it is supposed to make them equal to men) is not exactly a gadget for Grybauskaite. On June 30, during a gathering of the world’s female leaders, she and the Latvian Parliament Chairwoman Solvita Aboltina, despite the disagreement of other participants, spoke bravely against gender quotas in their countries’ parliaments (such quotas would maybe have more sense in the Muslim world).

Of course, during that gathering, Grybauskaite said the obligatory mystical words about lower pay for equal work (the usual propaganda having nothing to do with reality, i.e. manipulation with figures and words to justify imitation of the activity of bureaucrats, who make a living in various organizations of politically fashionable ‘correctness’ as it is understood by those selfish bureaucrats). Everybody in Lithuania knows the reality, which fails to inspire some radical feminist bigotry: according to Odeta Bloziene, head of the Institute of Private Finance of Swedbank, the family budget is mostly managed by women in Lithuanian families. According to statistics, the majority of divorces are initiated by women and the majority of official justifications for it are the low salary of a husband who, after a divorce, is usually kicked out onto the street from the former family home. The majority of unemployed in Lithuania are men and the majority of people with university education are women. The average lifespan for women is 77 years, while it is 65 for men and it means that the average Lithuanian man will never enjoy the life of a pensioner (retirement starts at the age of 65).

During her televised interviews, Grybauskaite stated that she likes her current job, but it was obvious from those interviews that the job takes all her time and leaves no space for something personal. She looks like a quite lonely person, though she does not seem to be unhappy.