Opposition seeks no-confidence vote on election commission member

Parliamentary opposition parties and some members of the governing coalition want to consider a no-confidence motion against Central Electoral Commission member Laura Matjošaitytė next week over consultations she allegedly provided to the Nemunas Dawn party and an attempt to conceal them, LRT reported.

The opposition has collected the signatures of 47 lawmakers to ensure the issue is placed on the agenda of the parliament’s September 24 sitting, Conservative MP Mindaugas Lingė told BNS.

The signatures were collected after parliamentary Speaker Juozas Olekas and other Social Democrats refused to include the matter on the agenda for the September 22 plenary sitting.

Liberal MP Eugenijus Gentvilas questioned Olekas about the delay, suggesting it could be linked to a September 22 meeting of the LRT Council, the national broadcaster’s governing council, which Matjošaitytė is also due to attend.

Olekas said the invitation to Matjošaitytė had not been sent earlier because she needed time to prepare answers. He said she would be invited to a plenary sitting after being given seven days to prepare, citing a case before the Constitutional Court concerning a person who had not been given enough time to respond to questions before being removed.

Gentvilas said the governing parties’ delay raised suspicions that Matjošaitytė was being kept available for the LRT Council meeting. The council is due to decide on September 22 whether LRT director general Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė committed a violation by failing to disclose information about people from whom the broadcaster bought services. The decision could provide grounds for dismissing her before the end of her term, BNS reported.

More than 30 lawmakers from the Conservative, Liberal and Democratic parliamentary groups have already initiated the no-confidence process against Matjošaitytė. They want to question her about her relationship with Nemunas Dawn.

According to the news portal Delfi, Matjošaitytė, who was an attorney at the time, advised Nemunas Dawn before the parliamentary elections and initially sought to conceal her involvement. In September 2024, slightly more than a month before the elections, she reportedly emailed the party’s vice-chairman, Robertas Puchovičius, a draft response to the Central Electoral Commission about the party’s sources of funding.

In the same email, she asked Puchovičius to transfer the response to a Word document he had created so that her metadata would not remain. Neither the party nor Matjošaitytė declared their previous cooperation.

After initially refusing to disclose whether she had been paid by the party, Matjošaitytė later said she had received no money. She has declined to comment on the details of her professional relationship with Nemunas Dawn, citing attorney-client confidentiality. Party chairman Remigijus Žemaitaitis says Matjošaitytė did not advise the party and received no payment.