VILNIUS (Reuters) -Lithuania’s parliament on Tuesday voted in favour of letting Social Affairs Minister Inga Ruginiene seek to form a new cabinet, bringing her a step closer to leading the government.
The 44-year-old former trade union leader and member of the ruling Social Democrats party joined the cabinet only in 2024 and has been thrust into the limelight after the sudden resignation last month of Gintautas Paluckas over his business ties to a company owned by his sister-in-law.
As parliament voted on Tuesday, some 2,000 people protested outside the building against Ruginiene’s plan to include the populist National Dawn, or Nemunas Dawn, party in the coalition.
“I know this will be a very complex job, and I am preparing for it”, Ruginiene told reporters after the vote.
She has said she will continue Lithuania’s support for Ukraine as well as Paluckas’ government pledge to spend 5-6% of gross domestic product on defence over the next several years.
Ruginiene must still get the president to approve her cabinet, and she will face a second vote in parliament in September to confirm its manifesto. Finance Minister Rimantas Sadzius is currently the acting prime minister until a new cabinet is sworn in.
Nemunas Dawn founder and head Remigijus Zemaitaitis is on trial for “attempting to create hostility, and provoking intolerance, towards Jews” and for playing down the Holocaust in Lithuania in social media posts in 2023.
Zemaitaitis has said the posts were not antisemitic and he denies wrongdoing. He resigned from parliament in April ahead of an impeachment vote, after the Constitutional Court ruled he had broken his oath by stirring up hatred against Jews in the posts.
Ruginiene told reporters on Tuesday that National Dawn was picked because the Social Democrats did not have much choice of coalition partners.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has said he would not allow either Zemaitaitis or other National Dawn party members to serve in the cabinet.
The centre-right Farmers and the Greens Union look set to round out Ruginiene’s coalition.
Lithuania’s next election for parliament is not due until 2028.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas, editing by Terje Solsvik and Hugh Lawson)
