„I will not go where Excellency the President is trying to take me, and I will not try to accuse me of something untrue. Because there has to be some basis for such a claim, agree on what? Simple logic, why did the Conservatives have to agree on something with the Labour Party?“ – Šimonytė said on Thursday on Info Commentary with Arnas Mazėtis.
„Neither we were selling Gražulis nor Gapšys, nor is there an object of negotiation here, as far as I am concerned, at all. And why did the conservatives have to do this? It seems Gražulis was an embarrassment for the whole Seimas, and I am glad that the Seimas managed to resolve this issue“, she added.
Therefore, the Prime Minister stressed that the Conservatives had no rational reason for such an agreement.
„Gapšys presence in the Seimas is also a disgrace for the Seimas, but I can't think of any reason why the Conservatives had to negotiate not to remove him from the Seimas. I can think of no rational reason“, she stressed.
Ingrida Šimonytė pointed out that even if the impeachment vote is arithmetically viewed, it is clear that the opposition support was needed for the initiative to succeed.
„Impeachment requires 85 votes. Even if you take the whole ruling coalition, the people who were sick on Thursday, the people who gave birth to children, etc., we have 73 votes. This means that even in theory, removing a Member of Seimas by coalition votes is impossible. I wonder why the President does not question some of the opposition parties, which said that we would vote unanimously in favour of the impeachment of Mr Gapšys. Still, many of them did not participate in the vote,“ the Prime Minister growled.
Impeachment voting should be open
I. Šimonytė believes that the Seimas should decide to make the impeachment vote open.
„What else this Seimas can do is adopt an amendment to the Statute to open such votes. And then all these manipulations would end because one would have to express one's opinion openly,“ Šimonytė said.
The Prime Minister also advocated the abolition of the immunity of members of the Seimas and the abolition of the mandate of a convicted parliamentarian by a court decision.
„The Constitution should be amended so that there is no immunity, which sometimes allows MPs to hide when the Prosecutor General comes to conduct proceedings (...) and when a court decision has already been finalised so that the Seimas does not have to discuss this issue any further and the mandate would be automatically forfeited,“ the Prime Minister said.
Last week's impeachment of the imprisoned parliamentarian V. Gapšys failed. Although four resolutions were tabled in the Seimas, which could have removed the MP from office based on the grounds stated, none of them attracted the necessary support of 85 MPs. A total of 122 MPs took part in the vote.
In response to this Seimas decision, there were allegations from the opposition that the ruling party agreed not to participate in the impeachment process of V. Gapšys, who was convicted in the MG Baltic case. However, the ruling party rejected these allegations, made publicly by Agnė Širinskienė, the elder of the Mixed Group of Members of the Seimas.
ELTA recalls that on 22 November, the Court of Appeal found all those previously acquitted in the MG Baltic political corruption case guilty. The court found Raimdonas Kurlianskis, former vice-president of MG Baltic (now MG Grupė), and Eligijus Masiulis, former leader of the Liberal Movement, guilty of corruption offences and sentenced them to six and six-and-a-half years' imprisonment respectively.
Vytautas Gapšys, a representative of the Labour Party and a member of the Seimas, was sentenced to four and a half years of imprisonment, while the court fined the expatriates Šarūnas Gustainis and Gintaras Steponavičius.