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Of Lithuania’s three countrywide polls that can happen this yr, the European Parliament (EP) election normally receives the least consideration. Vladas Gaidys, a sociologist and head of pollster Vilmors, is even a bit of misplaced for phrases about them.
“To inform you the reality, I have never given [the EP election] a lot consideration”, he says. “Everyone seems to be extra within the presidential ones. My first response could be that folks right here do not actually differentiate between the roles [of the elections].” Of the yr’s three elections, he too finds the EP contest to be the least attention-grabbing.
“Essentially the most attention-grabbing, after all, is the presidential election. There you’ll be able to look a candidate within the eye, like in athletics, or a horse race. It’s more durable to look their events within the eye, besides, there’s nonetheless pleasure there. However right here [the EP] is one thing very distant. Your pursuits are being represented, nevertheless it takes a specialist to grasp the topic.”
Mr Gaidys says that one will search arduous to search out any particular European Parliament election marketing campaign occurring in Lithuania.
“In the event you searched, you possibly can discover it. These already within the European Parliament, I believe, want to keep for an additional time period. It takes 5 years to grasp the way it works. [Social Democrat leader] Vilija Blinkevičiūtė is the apparent instance right here. Clearly she is just not drawn to this nation, the place she is on the mercy of journalists. Over there, you’re coping with heads of state and authorities…”
A European wage
Vytautas Dumbliauskas, a political scientist at Mykolas Romeris College (MRU), says solely half-jokingly that the EP election is simply of curiosity to those that are on celebration lists.
“The EP doesn’t decide the lifetime of an atypical individual very a lot. It’s considerably powerless. The European Fee, which isn’t elected by anybody, has extra energy than a parliament elected by residents”, he argues.
However voter…