The Seimas Temporary Committee proposed to accept Kreivis' answers to the interpellation questions. „Six members of the commission voted in favour and five against. The Seimas approved the commission's proposal: 71 Seimas members voted in favour, 54 against, and five abstained.
The interpellation procedure is therefore closed, and the minister will continue in office. You can read Kreivys answers here.
Although the opposition minister's answers did not seem to impress, the ruling party itself started the morning calmly and did not even expect the secret ballot to take place.
The minister's answers did not satisfy the Opposition
However, the Opposition was not satisfied with the minister's performance, even though only about half of the minority of the Parliament listened to him in the Seimas Chamber. Rasa Budbergytė, a representative of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) opposition group in the Seimas, said that Kreivys' answers lacked information on what the minister had done since assuming the post of minister in 2020.
„The Minister is helplessly floundering on the shore, like a man who really has neither the tools, nor the knowledge, nor even the political resolve. All that is happening from the minister's side are accusations against former governments and former ministers.
He is talking about the distant future, and the future is not warming the people of Lithuania today, whether we are talking about household consumers or businesses, which are talking anxiously about the fact that they will not be able to survive this and the coming winter,“ said R. Budbergytė.
The Social Democrat said that she missed the minister's assurance that the Government would take care of everyone.
„The Minister looks completely different on the rostrum than in his answers. Specialists obviously prepare his answers, but the minister himself, as a politician, does not give any emotional security. There is no message to politicians, people or business that, look, everything is under control, and everything is being managed,“ said R. Budbergytė.
Andrius Mazuronis, the elder of the Labour Party's group in the Seimas, said that he had heard in Kreivys answers the same things that members of Prime Minister Ingrid Šimonytė's Government have been saying all along.
„We have heard the same thing we have heard all the time so far – that the former governments are to blame, that the war was like a thunderbolt from the blue, that no one could have predicted it, and that no one could have predicted and prepared for the ensuing energy price crisis. This view, in my opinion, is wrong in principle.
I agree that some of the factors and some of the consequences that we are facing were not of our making. However, it was obvious that the consequences would be the ones we have today, and it is obvious that the Ministry should have prepared for such a course of events much earlier,“ Mazuronis said.
„What we are seeing now is a running after events, not an attempt to pre-empt events and react proactively,“ the Worker added.
He does not see any major danger for the minister
However, even before the start of the interpellation procedure, the ruling party radiated complete calmness.
„A number of experts have pointed out that the quality of the questions is not very good, so in my opinion, this interpellation does not pose a great danger to the minister,“ said Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, Speaker of the Seimas.
The Leader of the Parliament urged the opposition representatives not to interfere with the work of the Government through interpellations.
„The opposition certainly has many tools in its hands, and I would like to see that it does not devalue the political process by initiating interpellations one after the other,“ said Mrs Čmilytė-Nielsen.
The Speaker of the Seimas pointed out that Kreivys was being accused of things for which Russia, which caused the war in Ukraine, was responsible.
„The energy price shock and spike is a direct consequence of Putin's aggression. To blame the minister for this, or for the fact that nothing has been done since 2010 to develop our electricity production in Lithuania, is, in my opinion, not solid,“ she said.
I have full confidence in the minister
Prime Minister Šimonytė sees the situation similarly. The Head of Government stressed that she has full confidence in her minister.
„I simply see the Opposition's ambitions – the Opposition is doing its job. To what extent the questions are justified is a separate issue because there are questions in the interpellation where one question contradicts another.
But this is not something new and unique in the work of our honourable Opposition because we have certainly been accused of this and the other way round on more than one occasion, i.e. at the same time as being accused of this and the other way round.
I am not very surprised about that, the way they wrote the questions, yes. I think the minister has answered all the questions. I have a really good opinion of the minister's work. I have full confidence in the minister,“ the Prime Minister stated.
She again urged the Opposition not to bother with individual interpellations and to take on the whole Government at once.
„Apparently, it is the right of the Opposition to interpellate ministers when it sees fit to do so. The only thing is that if the Opposition is willing to interpellate every second minister, I have had an optimisation proposal for the Opposition for some time now, which is to interpellate the whole Government at once. It will be two for the price of one,“ Šimonytė said.
The Prime Minister also reacted to the situation that during the interpellation of D.Kreivis, not all the representatives of the Opposition, the ones who wanted to ask questions to the minister, were present in the Seimas hall.
„The Opposition will tell you that they are sitting in their offices and watching the minister's speech on blue screens. But either that is the case, or it is not, and I will not go and check. This is probably not the first time that you have been asked a question in Parliament, and you do not really see that someone is very interested in hearing the answer.
It's just a genre. What can you do?“ she laughed.
Criticised the questions
Vytautas Mitalas, the elder of the Freedom Party group, for his part, said that the questions on the interpellation to Kreivys did not honour the Opposition.
„This interpellation resembles the genre of a „kodėlčiukas“ (a person who asks about everything) because the Opposition, unable to formulate specific reproaches against the energy minister, simply started asking in the interpellation, „What are you doing?“ even though it is clearly written in the government programme what the Ministry of Energy is doing.
That is a text that does no one any credit, those questions that I saw in front of me. I think that such interpellations should not be played with,“ said Mr Mitalas.
On Tuesday, the conservative Minister of Energy, D.Kreivys, will answer the questions of the interpellation initiated by the Opposition in the Seimas. After listening to the minister's answers, a special commission will be set up to propose to the Parliament whether to approve or disapprove them.
Suppose the minister's answers to the questions are deemed unsatisfactory. In that case, the draft resolution of the Seimas on the lack of confidence in the minister must be adopted by secret ballot by a majority of more than half of all MPs, i.e. at least 71.
The no-confidence motion against the Minister for Energy is based on the critical situation in the energy sector. 62 opposition MPs signed the document, and the Social Democrats initiated the interpellation of Kreivys.
This is the third interpellation initiated against a member of this Government. At the end of 2021, Health Minister Arūnas Dulkys received an interpellation because of Lithuania's pandemic management strategy, and in June this year, Agriculture Minister Kęstutis Navickas received one because of the accumulated problems in agriculture. In both cases, the ministers retained their posts.
In addition, the Opposition is promising to interpellate the Minister for the Environment, Simonas Gentvilas, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gabrielius Landsbergis, and the minister for the Economy and Innovation, Aušrinė Armonaitė.
According to the Seimas Statute, an interpellation of a minister can be initiated by at least one-fifth (29) of MPs.
