Lithuania Elections: Shocking Results

• 10.25.2016, 19:25
•  Europe

Surprising results in Lithuania’s general elections. The Peasant and Green Union has won majority in the Parliament.

The agrarian bloc, is set to win between 54 and 56 seats out of the 141 member parliament – the biggest victory by a single party in 20 years.

According to Euronews, its success comes after a campaign run by party leader Saulius Skvernelis.

It was dominated by issues such as low wages and how to stem the flow of Lithuanian workers to other party of the EU.

"Our government will be transparent, responsible, professional and resolute," told Saulius Skvernelis, "I think people got fed up".

"We will forge a rational coalition government and we'll choose people who want to bring about changes," Skvernelis added, Reuters reports.

He said the party was opening coalition talks with both the Homeland Union and the Social Democrats of outgoing Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius.

Butkevičius- who lost his seat on Sunday -- had promised further increases to the minimum wage and public sector salaries.

But analysts said a new labour law making it easier to hire and fire employees, coupled with allegations of political corruption, have alienated voters already bitter over low wages and the brain drain to western Europe.

The party's official leader Ramunas Karbauskis - a billionaire industrial farmer and land baron - has raised the possibility of forming a "grand coalition" of all parties in parliament to create a technocratic government that will concentrate on stimulating economic growth.

Karbauskis said: ''I don't know an area, where the current government policy does not need to be changed.''

Analysts say the LPGU's surprise win reflects the fact that Lithuanians want new faces in the parliament.

Wage growth and job creation were key election issues in the country of 2.9 million people, plagued by an exodus of workers seeking higher wages abroad, France 24 writes.

Since Lithuania joined the European Union in 2004, about 370,000 people have left -- nearly half to Britain, where concern over immigration from eastern Europe was a key factor in June's shock referendum vote to leave the bloc.

Lithuana was hit hard by the global economic recession in 2009-2010. At the beginning of last year it adopted the EU’s common currency, the euro, which has sharply increased prices while wages and pensions remain among the lowest in the bloc.