Competing for the opportunity to become the conservative candidate in the direct Kaunas city elections are public figure and entrepreneur Šarūnas Jasiukevičius, Kaunas city municipality council member Andrijana Filinaitė, biophysicist, scientist, Kaunas Center branch chairman Rokas Mickus, journalist Dainoras Lukas, and Kaunas Dainava branch chairwoman Audronė Baronienė.
Read more The sixth Bread and Fire Festival will take place in Prienai
“We turned to Kaunas and offered the people of Kaunas to join our party members and decide through open elections which right-wing candidate they would like to see in Kaunas,” said Laurynas Kasčiūnas, chairman of the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD), to BNS.
“We have five candidates, all have their advantages, and they had the opportunity to present those advantages during debates. The most important thing is that Kaunas decides for itself. Vilnius does not impose, Vilnius does not decide, Kaunas decides, and this is probably the most important symbol of our democracy celebration, the open elections,” he said.
About 2,000 people have the right to vote for the party candidate – about 1,000 TS-LKD members belonging to Kaunas city branches, and the same number of supporters who are not party members.
Voting will take place over two days – Saturday and Sunday. TS-LKD members will be able to vote electronically, while supporters will have to come to the party headquarters.
Read more Want to avoid mercury poisoning? Here’s how much canned tuna you can eat per week
As TS-LKD executive secretary Kamilė Gogelienė told BNS, a candidate will be considered elected in the first round if more than half of the voters participating in the elections vote for them.
If no candidate receives such a number of votes, a second round of elections will be held two weeks later.
TS-LKD announces that it is the first party in Lithuania to start holding open candidate elections, so-called democracy celebrations, in which not only party members but also supporters who share TS-LKD values can participate.
Since 2015, Visvaldas Matijošaitis has been leading the Kaunas city municipality, running with the committee “United Kaunas.” In the last local elections, he was elected in the first round, while the conservative candidate Vytautas Juozapaitis came third, receiving 9.61% of the voters’ votes.
Read more People born in these months are the biggest stubborn ones: are you one of them?
Direct elections for mayors and municipal councils will take place in the spring of 2027.
