Vilnus and Vilnius Region

Waldemar Tomaszewski criticized a statement of the head of Polish diplomacy Jacek Czaputowicz who, during his visit to Vilniu,s appealed to the authorities of Vilnius for the abolishment of the electoral threshold for ethnic minorities because the current electoral system forces Poles to ally with Russians.

‘I am in no way related to that. Some politicians come and can tell anything, especially without consultation or meeting with us. So, why should we comment on that? We have common problems and identical interests with Russians and other ethnic minorities and our cohesion produces results. We have better results than one could have expected.  So, our union works, whereas politicians have their own agenda. Besides, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Tatars that we are working with, all of them are citizens of Lithuania. So why do not we rally? We have as many as 15 Lithuanians on the list recently. It indicates that people of different nationalities come to us. We defend our rights and bring people together to solve many problems of citizens of Lithuania’ – said in the interview to the Russian-speaking weekly ‘Ekspres Nedelia’ chairman of AWPL-ZCHR (Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania – Christian Families Alliance).

During his visit to Lithuania in September Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland Jacek Czaputowicz appealed to the authorities of Vilnius for the abolishment of the electoral threshold for ethnic minorities in the elections to Sejm (the lower house of the Polish Parliament). Since within the present electoral system AWPL—ZCHR (Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania – Christian Families Alliance), ethnic minorities are forced ‘to form a coalition with the Russian minority’.  According to Czaputowicz, new solutions ‘would back the security of the Polish minority’.  ‘It will be a good solution because the Polish minority will be more secured. In the discussion with us, its representative explained that they are forced to form a coalition with the Russian minority. It is not good, given the fact that Russia is considered as a threat in both countries’ – stated Czaputowicz.