Leiputė urges caution over proposal to dismiss election commission member

Social Democrat faction leader Orinta Leiputė has urged lawmakers not to rush a decision on whether to dismiss Laura Matjošaitytė from Lithuania’s Central Electoral Commission, LRT reported. She said parliament should first obtain more information and speak with Matjošaitytė herself.

The parliament’s board is due to decide on Thursday whether to place the proposal on the agenda of a plenary sitting. The proposal was initiated by the opposition Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats, which collected the required signatures on Tuesday. It was also signed by lawmakers from the Liberal and Democrats “For Lithuania” factions.

“It would not be right to form an opinion solely from headlines in the public sphere without speaking to her,” Leiputė said on the ELTA Kampas programme.

She said lawmakers currently had only public comments, quotations and politicians’ opinions, and needed more information. Leiputė added that no date had yet been agreed for a meeting with Matjošaitytė, but said parliament Speaker Juozas Olekas supported the idea.

“It would be wrong for politicians to make decisions in advance without knowing the information. Messages based only on emotions are certainly not enough,” Leiputė said.

The Central Electoral Commission said on Monday that metadata showed Matjošaitytė had prepared the Nemunas Dawn political party’s response to the commission on party membership fee-related issues two years ago. The commission will decide on Thursday whether to open an investigation into the consultations.

Complaints concerning Matjošaitytė have been received by the Central Electoral Commission, the Bar Association and the Chief Official Ethics Commission. The latter decided last week to collect additional information before deciding whether to launch an investigation.

The issue arose after the Delfi news portal reported that Matjošaitytė may have advised Nemunas Dawn before the 2024 parliamentary elections and helped the party prepare its response to the electoral commission.

Nemunas Dawn leader Remigijus Žemaitaitis said the party had consulted Matjošaitytė on various issues but had not paid her. Matjošaitytė also said she had not received “a single euro” for the consultations. The Central Electoral Commission said it had found no expenses for her legal services in the party’s financial documents.

Delfi also reported that in September 2024, more than a month before the parliamentary elections, Matjošaitytė sent the party’s deputy leader Robertas Puchovičius a draft response to the commission that she had prepared. In the email, she allegedly asked him to transfer the response into a Word document he had created so that her metadata would not remain. Puchovičius told Delfi he did not remember such an email.