Voluntary Membership Declaration in Communist Party for Election Candidates: Not Mandatory but Controversial

Declaring membership in the Communist Party in the election candidate’s questionnaire is not mandatory, but voluntary, and those deputies who have not declared it have not committed any offense.

“15min” journalists found the personal files of 12 ex-communists in the Special Archives of Lithuania, but six more admitted their membership in the Communist Party when the journalists interviewed them. The journalists chose which MPs to interview, taking into account their age and biography.

The Speaker of the Lithuanian Seimas, Viktorija Chmilīte-Nilsen, expressed the opinion on Tuesday that the declaration of former membership in the Communist Party should be made mandatory, as it is important for the public to know this.

It has already been reported that in April, the Lithuanian public was shocked by the discovery by the journalists of the TV channel “Laisves TV” that the country’s president Gitans Nausėdas was a member of the Communist Party during the Soviet period, although he did not declare it in the candidate’s questionnaire before the elections.

The former president of Lithuania, Dalia Grībauskaite, stated in the candidate questionnaire before both the 2009 and 2014 elections that she had been a member of the Communist Party since 1979.

2023-09-26 15:36:11
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