LITHUANIA: A Russian-born pickle magnate celebrated victory in Lithuania's general elections last night, as his recently formed Labour Party led exit polls after pledging to help the poor and crush corruption among the Baltic state's political elite.
Mr Viktor Uspaskich, an agribusiness millionaire whose face adorns a popular brand of pickled gherkin, rejected an offer from the ruling bloc of Social Democrats and Social Liberals to form a coalition with them and sign up to their manifesto.
"I believe that we will get a majority and we will be able to govern without help from anyone. If we do have a coalition, it's the other parties who will have to adopt Labour's programme," a jubilant Mr Uspaskich declared, as exit polls showed Labour with 28.3 per cent of votes, against 20.45 per cent for the ruling coalition and 16.17 per cent for the Conservatives. Final turnout was expected to be about 40 per cent.
Mr Uspaskich, who only formed Labour last year, has capitalised on a series of corruption scandals in Lithuanian politics and discontent among the country's poor, who have felt little benefit from the annual 9 per cent economic growth that has seen it dubbed the "Baltic Tiger".
"It's like Soviet times, more than half of them are former Communists," he said recently of the ruling clique. "They are used to the system in the Soviet Union where you kept your posts until you dropped dead. We want progress. We want to move forward."
His populist platform and promises of higher wages and pensions, lower taxes and cleaner politics, echoes that of Mr Rolandas Paksas, who was impeached as Lithuania's president in April over his relationship with a Russian businessman allegedly connected to Moscow's intelligence services and mafia.
Those accusations, which Mr Paksas denies, stirred up lingering fears in Lithuania that Russia was reluctant to lose influence in the former Soviet republic, which joined NATO and the European Union this spring, 13 years after escaping Moscow's rule.
Mr Uspaskich's rise to power has reinforced those fears, with critics noting his long-standing association with Russia's state gas monopoly Gazprom, upon which Lithuania depends for its gas supplies.
Hope for Mr Uspaskich's opponents lies in 71 of 140 parliamentary seats that are not allocated in relation to each party's share of the national vote, and where Labour's newcomers could struggle against more established candidates.
A second round of voting will be held in two weeks' time, in constituencies where no candidate won more than 50 per cent of the vote.
