The Seimas on Thursday voted not to strip the Labour Party’s MP Vytautas Gapšys of his mandate. The politician has recently started to serve his sentence for corruption in prison.
“It seems to me that we, as an institution, have found ourselves in a bad situation in the eyes of the society. There is a court decision, not a final one, but we are all aware of what criminal law is about. We will have a colleague in the Seimas who is physically in prison, which will certainly not add to the image of the Seimas as a [trusted] institution,” said Gentvilas.
The politician also said he was surprised at the fellow MPs, who chose to go against the court’s ruling instead of just ignoring the vote.
“This certainly makes the situation uncomfortable,” the politician said.
In the vote, 75 MPs supported two resolutions and 74 MPs backed other two, according to Algirdas Butkevičius, chair of a commission set up for the vote count.
A total of 122 MPs voted by four ballots on each of Gapšys' criminal offences held by the court in the so-called MG Baltic political corruption case.
At least 85 votes in favour are needed to remove an MP from the Seimas.
