Parliament to question electoral commission member over party advice

Lithuania’s parliament plans to invite Central Electoral Commission member Laura Matjošaitytė to a plenary sitting to answer questions about consultations she provided to the Nemuno aušra party, LRT reported.

Liberal MP Eugenijus Gentvilas asked parliamentary speaker Juozas Olekas why Matjošaitytė was not being invited on September 22, when the LRT council is also due to meet. He questioned whether the two events were connected.

Olekas said parliament was allowing Matjošaitytė time to prepare her answers. He said an invitation would be sent on Thursday and that she would probably be invited to a plenary sitting after being given seven days to prepare.

Thirty-five MPs from the conservative, liberal and Democratic parliamentary groups have asked for Matjošaitytė to be summoned. Gentvilas said the delay raised suspicions that she was being kept available for the LRT council meeting.

The LRT council is scheduled to decide on September 22 whether to find that its director general, Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė, committed a violation by failing to disclose data about people from whom the broadcaster purchased services. The decision could provide grounds for dismissing her before the end of her term.

MPs want to question Matjošaitytė about her relationship with Nemuno aušra. More than 30 members of parliament have already initiated a motion of no confidence in her as a Central Electoral Commission member.

According to the news portal Delfi, Matjošaitytė, who was a lawyer at the time, advised Nemuno aušra before the parliamentary election and initially sought to conceal that relationship. In September 2024, slightly more than a month before the election, she reportedly emailed the party’s deputy chairman, Robertas Puchovičius, a draft response to the Central Electoral Commission concerning the party’s sources of funding. She asked him to transfer the text to a Word document he had created so that her metadata would not remain.

Neither the party nor Matjošaitytė declared their previous cooperation. She initially refused to say whether she had been paid, but later said she had not earned any money. She has declined to comment on the details of her professional relationship with Nemuno aušra, citing lawyer client confidentiality.

Party chairman Remigijus Žemaitaitis has said that Matjošaitytė did not advise the party and received no payment. He said the emailed draft had been prepared by party members and that Matjošaitytė had only been asked to review it.

The Central Electoral Commission is investigating the scope of the consultations Matjošaitytė provided to Nemuno aušra. She chaired the commission from 2017 to 2021.