For the first time in Lithuanian political history, the parliamentary opposition has used obstruction to delay the decision on amendments to the law governing the management of the country’s public media.
Obstruction is a parliamentary tactic that delays the adoption of laws through particularly long speeches or procedural maneuvers, while not violating the rules.
The changes to the legislation related to the LRT were pushed through in an accelerated manner by the Social Democrats, the Nemunas Dawn party and the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union. Usually, accelerated procedures are reserved for exceptional cases when it is important to protect the interests of society and the state.
The haste of the ruling coalition sparked widespread protests, while journalists and LRT employees called on lawmakers to be prudent. Meanwhile, the opposition responded by submitting hundreds of amendments to the bill, many of which were ironic or absurd, thus leading to an unusually long session of the Seimas. During it, the motion of the conservative representative Dalia Asanavičiūtė-Gružauskienė was unexpectedly approved, which provided that the point stating that the head of the LRT can be removed from office before the end of the term only if the black cat of the opposition member Agnes Širinskienė Nuodėgulis expresses no confidence. Another session of the Seimas was planned, but it was canceled when the Chairman of the Culture Committee Kęstutis Vilkauskas fell ill and was taken to the hospital.
This means that a number of proposed amendments to the bill remained unexamined.
Obstruction is usually used in cases where the proposed bills are controversial, but the opposition does not have enough votes to achieve their cancellation. The technique has been used especially often in the USA. For example, in August 1957, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes without a break. Today, obstruction in the United States is more likely to involve delaying a vote than delivering lengthy speeches. The technique has been used with particular frequency in the last decade, as the composition of the US Senate is highly polarized, but this is the first time it has been used in Lithuania.
Read the full article in English here: https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2780161/historic-first-lithuanian-opposition-employ-filibuster-in-lrt-law-debate
The post Black cat maneuver: Lithuanian opposition uses obstruction technique for first time appeared first on Baltic News Network.
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