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Historical annals tell a story about Margiris, brother to Lithuania's Grand Duke Gediminas, who confronted a much more powerful army led by King John of Bohemia who invaded his lands. The Lithuanian offered the king to fight it out in a duel. Since Duke Margiris was a man of some might, he hoped for an easy victory.
Physical might did not help Margiris, however. Unused to European duels, Lithuanians breached knightly rules and Margiris was forced to concede John's superiority and accept captivity.
These were Lithuania's first limp steps into Europe. She studied and learned, however. Several centuries after the hapless duel, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became something of an example of civilization to the rest of Europe. Nine years before Paris staged the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, when catholics slaughtered their protestant neighbours, the Grand Duchy had granted equal rights to all Christian confessions. Europe kept spilling blood in religious wars for several more centuries.
But let's come back to the present. What kind of history are we – heirs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and her legal Statutes – writing? What would, for example, last week's entry be in the Book of Civilization?
1. Kėdainiai Knyaz shows middle finger
“Here you go,” our representative in the European Parliament Viktor Uspaskich gave Lithuania his middle finger right in front of TV cameras. With an air of self-satisfied cartoon cat, he summoned his party's MPs to protest outside the Parliament against decisions of court mice. And then, switching to the role of an impudent mouse who teases a cat, he dared the President: Come out, lazy coward, and fight!
Fellow Lithuanians, delight in what you've elected to Brussels. Delightful indeed. While Lithuania's ruling parties were at each other's throats over FCIS, the Kėdainiai Knyaz merely flashed several times on TV and there's a result – the party whose head spent a year and a half hiding from Lithuanian law enforcement in Russia is back on top in popularity polls.
2. MP Babilius gives law student a lesson
A drunk lawmaker rams his SUV into a student's car, wrecks it, swings out and, having got caught red-handed, rambles inarticulately, offering to buy it off for 25 thousand litas. The student calls the police, the MP flees the scene and hides in the country's most prestigious hospital. Professoriate of Santariškės Clinics hid Mr Babilius so well, that the drunk driver emerged from the hospital exclaiming “I do not drink.”
An unforgettable lesson from the Member of Parliament to Lithuania's youth. Especially astonishing is his remark for the student he hit: what kind of an “old clunker” are you driving anyway? Listen well, kids, get yourselves elected to Parliament and you'll be able to get away with anything.
3. Political zombie resurrects
The Parliament passed an amendment, allowing the impeached president Rolandas Paksas to get elected to the Parliament. The amendment is democratic enough, legally it shines. And yet. Is there another civilized nation in the world where a man who has broken his oath, violated the Constitution, got forcefully kicked out of the office – is now forcing himself back to run the state that he himself sued in international court? What's the use of the oath then? Does it still mean anything?
A distinction between legal liability and political liability is also a good indication of a nation's civilization and maturity.
4. Political concubines turned political bandits and street hooligans
For three years, the Conservatives happily stayed in one bed not only with the Liberal and Centre Union, but with the likes of Linas Karalius-Ezopas (who eventually got kicked out of the Parliament), the above-mentioned Babilius, Aleksandras Sacharukas, and even Saulius Stomas, who was promoted from the ranks of “street hooligans” (of the National Resurrection Party) to a respectable conservative. But here we go again – on Saturday, the chief conservative Vytautas Landsbergis called Libcentrtist, still formal allies of his party, political bandits and street hooligans.
How is it, Mister, that you yourself spent so many years in one governmental bed with them and now, half a year before the election, your former political concubines are suddenly political bandits? While intoxication of power lasted, both Libcentrists and Valinskas' showmen were good enough to sleep with? But if so, what makes the conservatives any better?
If you run a state together with political bandits, does that not make you a bit of a bandit yourself? And there's one more question. If you get divorced from the “political bandits” and Kubilius' minority government has to rely on the already-promised support of Uspaskich – the man with an extended middle finger to Lithuania – how does that make you a saint?
Western ambassadors marvel at how it is possible that rows over two bureaucrats can push all other state matters aside and even threaten the ruling coalition. However, the Lithuanian Civilization only knows these kind of rows.
What could possibly our entry into the Book of Civilization be, if our President's popularity only rises when she speaks against court decisions and drops once she tells to take the legal road – as in this case. It's probably the first time in President Grybauskaitė's term that she refused to give in to mass hysteria – and suffered a massive drop in her ratings as a result.
