Nausėda demands answers over prime minister’s wife’s employment

President Gitanas Nausėda expects answers about the employment of Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius’s wife at Raudondvaris Manor, a manor in Kaunas district, but said he sees an effort to focus on the prime minister’s past rather than his current work, LRT reported.

“Although there has already seemingly been enough time to start talking about what the prime minister is doing wrong as prime minister, we are still talking about the past,” Nausėda said in an interview broadcast by Žinių radijas on Tuesday.

He said one story had been followed by another, with more potentially to come, and questioned when the prime minister would be able to account to the public for his current work.

Questions had previously been raised about alleged plagiarism in Sinkevičius’s dissertation. In mid-August, LRT’s Investigative Department reported on several employees linked to the Social Democratic Party working at Raudondvaris Manor, including Aistė Sinkevičienė, who receives an additional salary there.

Sinkevičienė works remotely half-time as a public relations representative, although her contact details are not publicly available. She has said she was hired according to the applicable procedures and that information circulated publicly about the matter was inaccurate.

She said the manor did not publish her contact details because her duties did not involve providing comments to the media.

“I certainly do not think that questions about the prime minister’s wife’s employment should be left unanswered in any way,” Nausėda said. “It is necessary to clearly explain under what conditions she was hired. It is also important to establish whether certain results were achieved through this work, because work without results is presumably of no benefit to the public.”

However, he said the way the stories had been released one after another raised questions about whether an atmosphere was being created in which people would talk only about the past rather than the prime minister’s current work.

At the same time, Nausėda said greater transparency would be desirable when employing people connected to public figures in politics, so that doubts about the circumstances of their employment would not arise later.

LRT’s investigation also found that Aurelija, the wife of Kaunas district mayor and Social Democrat Valerijus Makūnas, had worked at the manor until several months ago. The manor also employs the mayor’s adviser Loreta Navakauskienė and her spouse, Seimas adviser to Education, Science and Sports Minister Raminta Popovienė Jūratė Kuzmickaitė, the son of longtime manor director Snieguolė Navickienė, and other people linked to the governing Social Democrats.

Kaunas district municipality administration director Mantas Rikteris said at a Seimas Anti-Corruption Commission meeting last week that the municipality would investigate the employment of Social Democratic Party members and relatives at the municipality-owned manor.

Kaunas district municipality is the manor’s main source of funding. BNS reported that its budget is approximately 4 million euros.

Nausėda rules out US troops not returning to Lithuania

Nausėda also said he currently rejected the possibility that US troops would not return to Lithuania, although the future size of the US force rotation remains unclear.

“Looking at how events are developing today, I would rule out such a possibility,” he said.

The president stressed that the United States had not yet completed its planning for the deployment of its military forces.