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“If I try to turn to the most heated moments, the page where I would look for the basis for these decisions would probably be the one most associated with the opera and the ghosts who visited the opera,” G. Landsbergis said in an interview with “Delphi”. According to him, this event was painful for the president. It was unexpected for G. Landsberg.
“I would say it is the axis. It has obviously turned into a rather strict internal statement about the appointments,” G. Landsbergis claimed.
At the beginning of this year, the Supreme Official Ethics Council announced that President G. Nauseda had violated the law when he paid the embassy in 2023. In the spring, he visited the musical “The Phantom of the Opera” in London. After the public outcry, the then ambassador to the UK, Atevidas Bajarūnas, paid the money out of his own pocket, claiming that the money was mistakenly paid from the embassy funds. The president and E. Bajarūnas disagreed with these conclusions, but did not appeal to the court.
Photo of the Office of the President of the Republic of Lithuania/Eitvydas Kinaitis/Gitanas Nausėda, Diana Nausėdiene, Giedrė Zickytė and Eitvydas Bajarūnas in London
The ethics committee found that the visit was private and paid for with embassy funds, and therefore the president and ambassador violated the law. Matas Maldeikis, a conservative member of parliament, appealed to the ethics committee over the president and ambassador’s visit to the opera house.
In 2023, E. Bajarūnas received allegations of misconduct by some embassy employees. Foreign Minister Gabriel Landsbergis invited him to visit Vilnius. The then President Nauseda defended Bajarūnas and publicly questioned the fairness of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ inspection. However, after VTEK made a decision, it finally agreed to remove E. Bajarūnas from his post.
In the interview, the Foreign Minister also told why G. Nausėda did not want to appoint the current Deputy Foreign Minister Simon Šatūnas as ambassador. He was nominated by the conservatives as Lithuania’s permanent ambassador to the EU, but his candidacy did not suit G. Nausėda.
“The president, or rather his team, is convinced that Mr. Saturnas somehow magically convinced Ursula von der Leyen to change the tweet, so that his chances of becoming ambassador dropped to a very low level,” G. Landsbergis tells “Delfi”.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. / Simon Chatounas
He spoke about the post of the President of the European Commission U. von der Leyen on the social network “X” (formerly Twitter), in which she thanked President G. Nausėda and Prime Minister Iingrida Šimonyta for the successful implementation of the vaccination program. G. Nausėda believes that the name I. Šimonytė appeared thanks to the efforts of S. Šatūnas.
In addition, Deputy Foreign Minister S. Šatūnas did not participate in the delegation of Gitana Nausėda to the European Commission (ECC) at the beginning of this year, although this is not usually the case. The Presidency replied that the above-mentioned meeting was a meeting of EU leaders and the representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who were preparing for it had done everything they could.
G. Landsbergis assured that now he will be able to express his opinions more actively in domestic politics and congressional campaigns.
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