Seimas rejects proposal to disclose parties’ criminal convictions

Lithuania’s Seimas has rejected a proposal requiring political parties and political committees to disclose criminal convictions, LRT reported. In the final vote on Tuesday, 33 lawmakers supported the amendments to the Electoral Code, 22 opposed them and 25 abstained.

The proposal would have required political organisations to tell the Central Electoral Commission whether a Lithuanian or foreign court had found them guilty of a criminal offence in a final judgment, regardless of whether the conviction had since been spent or expunged. They would also have had to disclose the offence and the sentence imposed.

The information would have appeared on election posters for candidates and candidate lists nominated by the organisation. Convictions more than 10 years old would not have been listed. Failing to disclose a conviction would have been considered a gross violation of the Electoral Code.

Artūras Zuokas, a member of the mixed parliamentary group who initiated the amendments, said the same transparency standard already applied to individual candidates. He said the law would affect two political parties and described the vote as evidence of “double standards” in politics.

Labour Party, the Liberal Movement and Order and Justice have previously been convicted in corruption cases. Liberal MP Eugenijus Gentvilas said most of his party colleagues had not taken part in the vote because of a possible conflict of interest. He called the proposal “much ado about nothing.”