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Outdoor Toilets Show Inequality Is Rife in Lithuania

Outdoor Toilets Show Inequality Is Rife in Lithuania

(Bloomberg) -- Algis Milasius doesn’t have a flushing toilet, and he gets his water from a well in his yard. He survives by raising chickens and keeping a garden, earning cash by chopping wood and carrying stones to buy marked-down staples at his village’s discount shop.

What makes Milasius special is that he not only lives in the European Union, but in Lithuania, a euro-area nation heralded as a model for economic integration. While living standards in the country of 2.8 million have leaped by half since it joined the EU in 2004, hundreds of thousands of people have left to escape the bloc’s second-highest inequality, and more than one in 10 people don’t have indoor plumbing.

It’s no surprise, then, that quality of life is dominating the Baltic state’s presidential ballot, which is happening alongside EU parliamentary elections this month. Running a close third in opinion polls, Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis is attacking his front-running rival candidates, a respected economist and a former finance minister, blaming them and the central bank for missteps during the 2008 economic crisis.

All of the candidates are trying to woo voters like Milasius with pledges to raise spending.

“It’s all about survival,” said Milasius, a former sawmill worker in the town of Meskuiciai, 220 kilometers (132 miles) from the capital Vilnius, who was still unsure about which candidate he’ll support. “I want to pick someone fair, someone who understands a simple person.”

Outdoor Toilets Show Inequality Is Rife in Lithuania

Voters will cast ballots in the first of two rounds on Sunday, with a May 26 runoff almost guaranteed because none of the top three candidates looks able to win a majority.

Ex-Finance Minister Ingrida Simonyte is running neck and neck in opinion polls with Gitanas Nauseda, the former chief economist of lender SEB AB, who’s become a household name over the years, appearing on everything from TV cooking shows to the nightly news.

Skvernelis says he’ll step down if he doesn’t advance to the second round, making the election a referendum on policies that include cash for poorer Lithuanians. But he received a boost that might help defuse that threat Friday, when populist dark-horse candidate Naglis Puteikis pulled out and called on his supporters to back either Skvernelis or another candidate to prevent Nauseda, the banker, from advancing.

If “raising pensions, introducing child benefits and strengthening young families is populism, then I agree to be a populist,” Skvernelis said.

While Lithuania’s president has limited powers over domestic social and economic issues, candidates are pledging to use the moral authority provided by the position to influence the government’s policies.

The populist campaigning has been more muted than in Baltic peer Estonia, where far-right euroskeptics took seats in the government last month. But anti-elite rhetoric is resonating among voters in a country where salaries among the rural population are just over half of those in Vilnius.

Income inequality and risk of poverty are in a “critical situation” and “reflect both the low level of benefit adequacy and the very limited progressivity of the tax system,” the European Commission said in a February report.

Outdoor Toilets Show Inequality Is Rife in Lithuania

The events of 2008 remain a touchy subject in Lithuania, a testing ground for the EU’s austerity policies, which prompted an exodus of workers to richer western nations.

While Skvernelis is the only candidate who’s outlined concrete proposals to raise spending, Nauseda has vowed to increase the second-lowest level of government outlays in the EU.

Simonyte, who worked at the Finance Ministry during the crisis and whose party has strong backing in cities, has warned that raising expenditure is only a short-term fix.

“We need to strengthen the society where people and the regions don’t feel forgotten, marginalized or unwanted,” she 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, Tony Halpin

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