Austerity-weary voters in Lithuania look set to evict the Baltic state’s four-year-old Conservative government in a general election Sunday and hand power to the left.
Opinion polls show Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius’ Conservative party and their Liberal allies set to be punished by the electorate despite a recovery from one of the world’s deepest recessions.
Voters in the European Union nation of three million are expected to swing behind the centre-left Social Democrats and the leftwing populist Labour party.
Social Democrat leader Algirdas Butkevicius, a former finance minister, is tipped to become premier in a coalition with Labour.
The left pledges to raise the minimum wage and introduce a progressive income tax, but Butkevicius has also underlined his prudent credentials.
He quit as finance minister in 2005 in part because the then Social Democrat-led government did not close the gap between spending and revenue.
The likely loss of power to the Social Democrats will be a bitter blow for Kubilius, who beat them in the last election in 2008 and is the only Lithuanian premier to survive a full term.
In 2008, voters heeded his message that the Social Democrats failed to rein in breakneck growth fuelled by credit and wage hikes and left Lithuania ill-prepared for the global crisis.
Kubilius was seen as a safe pair of hands, having been premier in 1999-2000 when Lithuania was lashed by the economic meltdown in neighbouring Russia, a major trade partner.
But the 2009 crisis went far beyond that slump, with the economy shrinking by 14.8 percent.
The Kubilius government launched biting spending cuts far beyond those of embattled western members of the EU, which Lithuania joined in 2004.
The recovery began in 2010, with output expanding by 1.4 percent, before increasing to 6.0 percent in 2011, but analysts say not enough voters have felt its benefits.
Non-eurozone Lithuania is vulnerable to the crisis in the currency bloc — home to its top trade partners — and the government’s growth forecast is 2.5 percent this year and 3.0 percent in 2013.
Under Lithuanian law, a total of 70 members of the 141-seat parliament are elected by proportional representation from party lists.
The remaining 71 are chosen in constituency races, with October 28 run-offs where no candidate secured a first-round majority.
The left also pledges to “reset” ties with Moscow, rocky since Lithuania became the first republic to secede from the Soviet Union in 1990.
Tensions have spiked as Vilnius locks horns with Russian energy giant Gazprom, accusing it of abusing its position as Lithuania’s sole supplier to set above-market prices.
The Kubilius government has striven to diversify energy supplies, amid problems since the 2009 closure of Lithuania’s only nuclear power plant, a Soviet-era facility shut under the terms of its EU entry.
In tandem with Sunday’s election, a non-binding referendum is being held on plans to build a new atomic plant.
Polls open at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) and close at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT).
Austerity-weary Lithuania set to swing left in election
