Prime Minister: belittling the publicly announced potential ambassador candidates is not appropriate for the Presidency

“In my opinion, this kind of belittling, some kind of teasing, calling them something paratroopers and something else, in my opinion, is not appropriate for the president’s representatives or the president himself,” the Prime Minister told reporters in the Seimas on Thursday.

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President Gitanas Nausėda, in an interview with the program “Info komentarai su Arnu Mazėčius” this week, raised doubts regarding the transparency of the process of competitions for ambassadors.

According to him, following the tenders, it turns out that candidacies are offered repeatedly, even though they were rejected as unsuitable.

“That’s when I wonder if this is a sincere process for selecting an ambassador, or if it’s just an imitation of the process.” If there is an imitation and if you want to take care of “parachutes”, then we do not sew parachutes here in the Presidency. There are some who may have stayed somewhere else in the military bases,” said the head of the country.

At the time, the president’s chief adviser, Frederik Jansson, said on Wednesday that the dispute over the appointment of new ambassadors arose because a clan of “statesmen” was trying to seize important positions.

“Statesmen” is informally called a group of civil servants and officials who may have had an impact beyond their powers on the most important political and economic processes of Lithuania.

According to the president’s top adviser, some comments on social media indicate that “the so-called statesmen of 15 years ago are trying to return to positions of responsibility in the State Department and the diplomatic service.”

F. Janson reacted in this way to the recent public clarifications between the Presidency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which controls the majority of representatives, regarding the stalled appointment of some ambassadors.

The signatory of March 11, long-time diplomat Albinas Januška, who was even publicly called the organizer of the “statesmen” clan, announced on Facebook this week that the candidate for ambassador to Poland, who did not like the president, is the former ambassador to Austria and Sakartvel Giedrius Puodžiūnas, who also worked as the first secretary of the Lithuanian Embassy in Poland and this the Embassy’s Chargé d’Affaires.

He mentions that the candidacy of other professional diplomats also got in the way of the president: Egidijus Meilūnas, Simon Šatūnas, Inga Stanytė-Taločkienė, Rolandas Krisčiūnas, Rolandas Kačinskas, Laimon Talat-Kelpša. According to A. Januška, leaking these names to the media causes damage not only to specific individuals, but also to the state.

“All the proposed candidates, except for a few cases that were to be diplomatic by the decision of the president, are career diplomats with many years of work experience in the diplomatic service. I have known many of them (…) for many years and I know their merits and I know what they have done and what they are capable of and for which we must be grateful to all of them”, said I. Šimonytė.

The prime minister said she believed the dispute “isn’t just regarding the diplomatic service.”

“There was a very similar situation with the minister of the former government, Eimučius Misiūnas, who wanted to return to the position of a judge, and that opportunity was prevented for him also on very dubious grounds, some conversations regarding the fact that people should be chilled and kept in some kind of refrigerator,” said the Prime Minister.

E. Misiūnas was appointed as a judge of Vilnius city district court in 2015. In December 2016, he became the Minister of Internal Affairs and held this position until August 2019, following which he was the Deputy Minister of National Defense until December 2020.

In 2020, he took part in the Seimas elections and, when he was not elected, in December he submitted a request to the National Judicial Administration to re-appoint him as a judge of the Vilnius City District Court.

However, President G. Nausėda did not grant his request, saying that he needed a “political cooling off” period. The Presidency then stated that “persons who interrupted their judicial career due to participation in political activities or appointment to political positions, and seek to restore it without losing their political positions”, do not meet the principles and motivational criteria of political neutrality.

As a result, E. Misiūnas has appealed to the courts of various instances.