|
A national education system was organized in 1990. It is
compulsory and free schooling from the children from 6 to 7
years until they are 16. The primary school is 4-years old,
followed by a 6-year secondary school. The high school is 2
years old. The language of instruction is mainly Lithuanian,
but there are also schools where it is taught in Russian,
Polish, Belarusian and Yiddish. Some schools teach in
several languages. There are private schools next to the
public. The country has 15 public, higher education
institutions, including 10 universities. The University of
Vilnius, founded in 1579, is one of Europe's oldest
universities. Check topschoolsintheusa for test centers of ACT, SAT, and GRE as well high schools in the country of Lithuania.
New coalitions
Brazauskas did not stand for re-election in the December
1997 presidential election. The partyless Valdas Adamkus,
with several decades behind as a US citizen, became a new
president in 1998. In 1999, political and personal conflict
between President Adamkus and Prime Minister Vagnorius led
the prime minister to step down. The president said, among
other things, that the prime minister had failed to fight
corruption in the public sector.
In May, the mayor of Vilnius, Rolandas Paksas, who was
then a member of the Federation Union, became the new prime
minister. However, he had to retire the same fall and then
transitioned to the center party Liberal Union (LLS) where
he was elected chairman. He justified the move by
disagreeing with the government's decision to sell the
strategically important oil refinery Mažeikių Nafta to a US
company.
At the 2000 election, LSS entered Seimas with a large
group and Paksas re-formed government. It burst in the
summer of 2001 because of disagreement over economic policy,
especially around Paksas' privatization policy. In July,
veteran and Social Democrat Brazauskas was appointed new
Prime Minister. In the same year, the LDDP merged with the
historic Social Democratic Party, which had been allowed
back after Lithuania's secession from the Soviet Union. The
new party was named Lithuania's Social Democratic Party,
LSDP.
In the January 2003 presidential election, Rolandas
Paksas surprisingly won the incumbent president, Valdas
Adamkus, in the second round of elections. Paksas came under
strong political pressure towards the end of 2003 because of
charges of corruption and alleged links to the Russian
mafia, where he allegedly leaked state secrets. In April
2004, he was put on trial and deposed by the National
Assembly - Seimas - and deprived of the right to stand for
life. This decision was later criticized both by the
country's Constitutional Court and by the European Court of
Human Rights. After Paksas had to step down, Adamkus was
again elected president of Lithuania in 2004. He resigned in
2009 and was succeeded by center-right candidate Dalia
Grybauskaitė, who won the 2009 and 2014 presidential
elections.
There was a political crisis in October 2003. There were
rumors that President Paksas had links to organized crime.
In April 2004, the National Assembly in Lithuania held court
against the president. He was found guilty of violating the
constitution in a corruption case. Prime Minister Algirdas
Brazauskas was one of the politicians who fought hard
against the president. An extraordinary presidential
election was held in June. After two rounds of elections, it
became clear that former President Valdas Adamkus - an
independent center politician - had won. He took office as
new president in mid-July.
Algirdas Brazauskas continued as prime minister after the
2004 election. At that election, nine parties were
represented in parliament, the largest being the newly
started populist Labor Party.
In the summer of 2006, Prime Minister Brazauskas resigned
as prime minister after the Labor Party withdrew from the
government coalition. Gediminas Kirkilas took over as prime
minister. During the parliamentary elections in the autumn
of 2008, the Fatherland Party became the largest party and
Andrius Kubilius was appointed prime minister. In 2012, the
Social Democrats became the biggest and Algirdas Butkevičius
became the new prime minister. After the election for the
party Lithuania's Federation of Farmers and Greens (LVŽS) in
2016, Saulius Skvernelis Prime Minister in coalition with
Social Democrats, LSDP. The LSDP broke out of the government
in the fall of 2017 after a vote in the district
associations. In April 2018, LVŽS formed a new government
under Svernelis together with outlaws from the LSDP, which
had now formed a new party, Lithuania's Social Democratic
Labor Party, LSDDP.
The financial crisis in 2009 hit Lithuania hard. A
dramatic exodus of young people and the unemployed has
further affected the country. Around 20 percent of the
population has left the country since the early 1990s. |
