Enough with the empty intrigue and bickering
A classic of the genre. That’s the shortest way to describe this week’s annual address by President Gitanas Nausėda. Speaking to Lithuanian voters about the problems they care about and criticizing the Government for making too little progress in solving them. A call to listen and to start a dialogue, to play on the same team for Lithuania. Celebrating our initiatives highlighting the Government’s failures, and looking forward to the forthcoming parliamentary elections.
The Constitution of Lithuania partly programs such a genre and such content of the presidents’ annual messages. A directly elected non-partisan president is only as powerful as the voters support him. The greater its popularity, the greater its influence. It makes sense that presidents use annual messages to talk about what voters care about. And usually criticize governments, whatever they are. Parliament’s governments and rulers decide what voters care about most – economic, social, education, and health care issues. Governments are generally held responsible for what displeases the electorate. As a result, the presidents’ annual messages are usually praised by the opposition.
Of course, every Government is open to criticism – it is common for actual performance to diverge from election promises or the intentions set out in the Government programme. In his role as a political and institutional backstop in national politics, the President can and should identify those things that have yet to be done that he is not reasonably satisfied with. They can make proposals and outline strategic policy guidelines for the future. This can also be seen in this annual report.
However, according to the Constitution, the President must cooperate with the Government and those in power in Parliament. He can expect his legislative initiatives to be adopted and implemented only by cooperating. In foreign policy, the Constitution very specifically obliges the President to work together with the Government. As the President said in this annual address, it is important to remember that “we all play on the same team.”
However, it is precisely a self-critical reflection on how he has cooperated with this government and the ruling coalition that is missing from the Annual Report. It is usually lacking in annual reports because, like other politicians, the President emphasizes his achievements and his competitors’ failures. A non-partisan president is, as it were, above party bickering and likes to emphasize this. “I regret to say that the ruling majority has also had to defend itself against its reckless actions on several occasions this year,” said Gitanas Nausėda. However, like other elected politicians, he participates in political life.
This status creates different incentives – the need to compete and the need to cooperate. Each President in Lithuania has been able to balance these conflicting incentives in different ways, depending on his experience, abilities, and leadership skills. At the end of the first term of the re-elected President Gitanas Nausėda, it can be said that he has not been able to find common ground with the conservatives from the very beginning of his first term in office. The highlights of this annual report, especially the impromptu criticism of the resigned Minister Monika Navickienė, show that President Gitanas Nausėda is actively engaging in the campaign for the forthcoming Seimas elections.
Perhaps the most important question is to what extent President Nausėda’s actions and decisions align with his calls for politicians to show “less unconstructive stubbornness and backroom games.” Ironically, on the same morning, before the President’s annual report, his advisor publicly discussed the possibility of Lithuania’s candidates for the European Commission being Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė and Finance Minister Gintarė Skaistė. Although the Conservatives see Foreign Minister Gabriel Landsbergis as the main candidate, the Prime Minister has clarified that she does not intend to put herself forward. So many people must have wondered what games the President and his team are playing and why President Nausėda is so stubbornly reluctant to support the candidacy of Minister Landsbergis. His public explanations that he sees better candidates and that the position of EU Commissioner for Foreign Policy is already filled sound, to say the least, unconvincing.
Reprinted from Vz.lt
Translated from Lithuanian language.
This commentary is the opinion of the author and VU IIRPS is not responsible for its content.
