OF 14 HATS IN THE RING FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,

UNCLAS VILNIUS 000144 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV LH SUBJECT: OF 14 HATS IN THE RING FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ONE IS XXL ¶1. SUMMARY: Lithuanian election officials have registered applications from 14 candidates for the presidential election in May, with current EU Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite being the front runner. Voters will go to the polls on May 17. If no candidate wins a majority, a second round of voting will be held June 7. End summary. ¶2. On March 16, Lithuanian election officials registered the last of 14 applicants to be candidates in the presidential election scheduled for May 17. Candidates still must submit to the central election commission the signatures of 20,000 voters by April 2 to secure a place on the May 17 ballot. The final list of candidates will be announced April 17, which will be the first official day of the campaign. If no candidate wins a majority of the votes May 17, a runoff will be held on June 7, which is also the date for elections to the European Parliament. ¶3. Surveys show that Grybauskaite looms above the competition and could win in the first round. In fact, she routinely does so well in opinion polls that the director of a research company complained to us that almost nobody is bothering to order new polls related to the election. The patriarchs of the two largest political parties, the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, have praised her, and the Conservative and Liberal Movement parties have formally endorsed her candidacy. Even other candidates acknowledge that she will be difficult to beat. ¶4. Grybauskaite, 53, has focused on European affairs for much of her career in government, though she did serve as deputy chief of mission at the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington in 1996-99. She was Lithuania's first European Commissioner in 2004 and is responsible for Financial Programming and Budget. She served as Lithuania's Finance Minister in 2001-04. As Deputy Foreign Minister in 2000-01 she was a key figure in Lithuania's EU accession negotiations. She was Lithuania's chief negotiator with the IMF and World Bank when she served as Deputy Finance Minister in 1999-2000. ¶5. At this early stage, no other candidate has support of more than about 10 percent of likely voters, according to poll results. Several candidates do have significant governmental experience or name recognition: -- Algirdas Butkevicius, Seimas (parliament) member and former Minister of Transportation and of Finance, is the newly elected leader of the Social Democrats, the largest opposition party. -- Valentinas Mazuronis is a Seimas member and deputy head of the Order and Justice Party, whose leader, Rolandas Paksas, was impeached from the presidency in 2004 and is constitutionally ineligible. -- Arunas Valinskas, speaker of the Seimas, is a former TV host who last year formed the National Revival Party, peopled largely with show-business names. The party finished third in parliamentary elections and is one of four parties in the governing coalition. -- Kazimira Prunskiene, Lithuania's first post-independence prime minister in 1990-91, received 47 percent of the vote in the runoff of the 2004 presidential election. After her Peasants' Party did not pass the threshold to be seated in the current Seimas and she lost in a single-mandate district race, she relinquished leadership of the party. Candidates with even lesser chances include: -- Algimantas Matulevicius, chairman of the Civil Democracy party and former Seimas member who got 2 percent of the vote in the 2004 presidential election; -- Loreta Grauziniene, Seimas member and deputy chairwoman of the Labor Party; -- Ceslovas Jezerskas, a reserve brigadier general running as an independent, though he is an Order and Justice Party member; -- Algirdas Pilvelis, publisher and editor of the daily newspaper "Lietuvos Aidas;" -- Valdemar Tomasevski, chairman of the Polish Election Action Party; -- Zigmantas Vaisvila, chairman of the Sajudis Initiative group; -- Vytautas Kundrotas, a publicist; -- Jonas Jankauskas, who describes himself as representing small and medium businesses, and -- Vidmantas Sadauskas, who has declined to release information about himself publicly. ¶6. COMMENT: Except for her stint at the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington, Grybauskaite has spent most of Lithuania's years of independence focused on the European Union and other European affairs. She has said that Lithuania must work more closely with the European Union to have an integrated approach to its former Soviet neighbors. But she also has said that Lithuania must maintain good relations with the United States as fellow members of NATO, although she has not publicly set out her views of the U.S.-Lithuania relationship. The parties that support her, as well as the parties supporting other major candidates, all favor strong relations with the United States. End comment. CLOUD