Gaižauskas says Sinkevičius should resign over dissertation plagiarism

Ruling-party lawmaker Dainius Gaižauskas says Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius should leave office after an ethics panel found plagiarism and other academic writing violations in his dissertation, LRT reported on Sunday.

“My view is clear: he should resign. If that means an early election, so be it,” Gaižauskas told Lrytas TV. He said the public must trust the government if it is to unite people against threats, adding that the violations do nothing to build that trust.

An ethics commission at ISM University of Management and Economics found significant breaches involving academic writing, citations and the attribution of sources, including cases of plagiarism. It concluded that Sinkevičius had violated the university’s principle that a dissertation must be the author’s own work. The commission gave him up to six months to correct it.

Sinkevičius has acknowledged the citation and source-attribution breaches but said he does not question the dissertation’s scholarly value. He said a correction addendum would be prepared and made public under the university’s rules. The doctoral committee considers that the dissertation retains its scholarly value, while the ethics commission has described starting a procedure to revoke his degree as disproportionate.