LITHUANIA’S FIRST female president urged ministers to cut the recession-hit country’s budget and warned that some of them may be sacked, a day after she secured a landslide election victory.
European budget commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite trounced her opponents by taking almost 70 per cent of the votes in Sunday’s ballot, and quickly announced plans to help her Baltic state escape a deep economic slump that has followed several years of rapid growth.
Ms Grybauskaite (53), a black-belt in karate with an acknowledged regard for former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, said the centre-right government had “underestimated the real scale of recession”. “The budget was way too optimistic and needs to be revised in the near future. We must save money,” she said.
“Throughout the campaign I said I wasn’t satisfied with the performance of certain ministers, and I haven’t changed my mind,” Ms Grybauskaite added. “Either a person is capable of fixing their mistakes and stays in the job, or they go.”
The former finance minister, who ran as an independent candidate, said the finance, social welfare, health, economy and energy ministers were under particular scrutiny: “Those five ministers are the first I’d like to meet and hear their ideas on this situation.”
Lithuania’s 3.4 million people have been hit hard by the global economic slowdown: unemployment in March was 15.5 per cent, compared to 4.3 per cent a year earlier, and the country’s economy is expected to shrink by some 15 per cent in 2009, after growing by 3.1 per cent in 2008.
But more sacrifices would be necessary to drag the country out of recession, said Ms Grybauskaite, who pledged to take a pay cut to set an example to state officials.
“Together we need to shoulder the burden to help our nation, to help ourselves,” she said.
“Hard times are still to come . . . but we have to believe our country will be able to rise up,” she added, insisting she would seek a balance between controlling Lithuania’s budget deficit and scaling back state spending on, for example, maternity and paternity leave. “Raising babies for two years [on high pay] is a very good idea, but does Lithuania now have enough resources for this programme? I am not sure,” she said.
Ms Grybauskaite also said Lithuania did not need an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, and should be able to adopt the euro some time between 2012 and 2015.
