Baltic Ballot Is Win for Pro-EU Forces Even Before Voting Starts
Baltic Ballot Is Win for Pro-EU Forces Even Before Voting Starts
(Bloomberg) -- As nationalist parties clamor to increase their clout at this week’s European Parliament elections, one corner of the continent will deliver a sure-fire win for the mainstream when it picks a new president.
Both candidates in Lithuania’s Sunday’s election runoff, ex-Finance Minister Ingrida Simonyte and former Nordic bank economist Gitanas Nauseda, have pledged to keep the Baltic country of 2.8 million people oriented toward the European Union’s liberal and multi-cultural values.
Without a vote being counted, the ballot is already another victory for forces that are pushing back against populists from Warsaw to Rome. It follows Slovak voters’ decision to make an anti-corruption campaigner their first woman president in April.
“Everyone realizes that there’s an existential interest at stake, and they have come back to vote for the mainstream parties,” said Otilia Dhand, a senior vice president at Teneo intelligence. “The populist streak is not over by any measure, it’s just that it may have reached its peak.”
The winner will replace Dalia Grybauskaite, another former economist known as a harsh critic of neighboring Russia. While the president has limited powers over domestic issues, the post provides moral authority that can influence government policies.
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On the surface, the candidates running for Lithuanian president couldn’t be more different. Simonyte thrashes to Metallica. Nauseda chills with jazz. She lives in a garden commune bungalow with her sick mother. His riverside glass and steel mansion graces international architecture websites.
A closer look reveals virtually identical policies. They’ve vowed to help tackle the EU’s second-worst inequality. They also mark a focus on unambiguously pro-EU sentiment at a time when ruling parties in ex-communist peers Estonia, Hungary, Poland and elsewhere are increasingly tilting toward nationalism.
Simonyte won the May 12 first round by a razor-thin margin of just over 5,000 votes. But Nauseda, an independent, is seen as the runoff favorite after winning the endorsement of the ruling party. Its candidate, Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, was knocked out after he blamed Simonyte and the central bank for mistakes during the global financial crisis.
He threatened to resign and dissolve his government a year before regular elections, but he may reconsider after he reconfirmed support from the ruling Peasants and Greens Union last week.
Simonyte, 44, led the Finance Ministry during the crisis, pushing through EU-endorsed austerity measures after a recession wiped out 15% of the economy. A supporter of abortion and gay rights, she said she accepted the candidacy of the opposition Christian Democrat Homeland Union to help fight anti-establishment sentiment.
“There are trends lately that seem to turn the circle of history backwards, as if liberal democracy didn’t deliver, everything failed, and there’s someone -- bankers, pharmacists, businessmen, stamp collectors, people with brown hair, or cyclists -- guilty for our failings," said Simonyte. “I want to fight back.”
Nauseda, 55, has long been seen as a successor to Grybauskaite after years of media appearances as the chief economist of SEB Bank A/S in Vilnius, the capital. He also tried to blame Simonyte for the damage during the crisis, a strategy that backfired for Skvernelis.
“Some decisions made then were so controversial they still reverberate today,” Nauseda said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Milda Seputyte in Vilnius at mseputyte@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey
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