Matjošaitytė declines to say whether she will attend dismissal vote

Laura Matjošaitytė has not said whether she will attend Tuesday’s Lithuanian parliament sitting, where lawmakers are due to consider a proposal to remove her from the Chief Electoral Commission (VRK). LRT reported, citing the news portal Lrytas. Matjošaitytė is accused of advising the Nemuno aušra party.

“Thank you very much for the call, I won’t comment. Have a nice day,” Matjošaitytė told Lrytas when asked whether she would attend the sitting.

The Lithuanian parliament, known as the Seimas, was due to consider her removal on September 24, but postponed the matter after she did not attend. Speaker Juozas Olekas said at the time that she was away. He reiterated his position that she should leave the commission and said he hoped she would submit her resignation herself.

Last month, the opposition Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats gathered the required signatures to ask that a motion to remove Matjošaitytė from the commission be added to the Seimas agenda. Lawmakers from the party’s, the Liberal and the For Lithuania Democrats parliamentary groups signed the document.

The Chief Electoral Commission, the Lithuanian Bar Association and the Chief Official Ethics Commission are investigating Matjošaitytė’s conduct. The Special Investigation Service declined to open a pre-trial investigation.

The questions about her conduct arose after the news portal Delfi reported that Matjošaitytė may have advised Nemuno aušra and helped the party prepare a response to the commission. She has said she was not paid for the advice.

Delfi also reported that in September 2024, more than a month before the parliamentary election, Matjošaitytė sent party deputy chairman Robert Puchovičius a draft response she had prepared for the commission. In an email, she asked him to copy it into a Word document of his own so that her metadata would not remain in the file.

The commission said metadata showed that Matjošaitytė had prepared the party’s response to questions about membership fees two years ago. She chaired the commission from 2017 to 2021 and returned as a member last year after a parliamentary decision. Her candidacy was put forward by then Justice Minister Rimantas Mockus.