Coalition partners seek answers over prime minister’s wife’s job

Coalition partners are seeking clear answers after an LRT investigation examined the career circumstances of Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius’s wife, Aistė Sinkevičienė. Political scientist Rima Urbonaitė said the couple’s response had failed to dispel the impression that legal provisions may have been used to bypass a selection process for lower-level positions before moving to higher posts without competition.

Opposition members of the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, said the situation should be examined by the relevant authorities. The Seimas Anti-Corruption Commission is due to decide next week whether to launch an investigation, according to LRT.

Urbonaitė, a lecturer at Mykolas Romeris University, said questions also remained unanswered about Sinkevičienė’s income. She criticised the official’s response to journalists who asked about her work in the civil service.

“When a civil servant answers questions from journalists about her work in the civil service by asking, ‘What is the public interest here?’, your hands really do drop because the official does not understand her accountability and that asking about her work is a completely natural matter of public interest,” Urbonaitė said on LRT television’s Svarbi valanda programme.

She said the case and similar nepotism stories that have emerged in the past damaged Lithuania’s political system. Urbonaitė also pointed to what she described as a “black hole” involving parliamentary assistants and advisers.

She said some politicians had teams of five or six assistants and advisers whose contact details were unavailable. Urbonaitė also said she had questioned how one woman could work as a deputy mayor while also serving as a parliamentary assistant. According to the political scientist, the MP’s response implied that the party had simply decided that the appointment was needed.

Urbonaitė said similar cases would continue across all parties as long as party interests were considered more important than the public interest. She added that politicians did not appear interested in changing the practice until voters clearly said “stop”.

Coalition partners have also called for clarification. Seimas Speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen said the employment appeared highly similar to a fictitious appointment, noting that Sinkevičienė’s purported colleagues allegedly did not know about her.

“Women who work and seek careers do not need party protection, fictitious workplaces or gifts of this kind,” Čmilytė-Nielsen told LRT television.

Virginijus Sinkevičius, chairman of the coalition partner Democratic Union For Lithuania, said Kaunas District Municipality needed to provide clear answers. He said the questions had to be resolved so that there would not even be an appearance that the employment was fictitious and possible because the Social Democratic Party had governed the municipality for a long time.