Lithuania elects its first female head of state
Figure 1. A Lithuanian 1.20-litas Boletus Aereus stamp (Scott 584).
Figure 2. A 60-centas+40c semipostal stamp (Scott B54) commemorating the Third European Basketball Championship held in Kaunas in 1939.
Figure 3. A 10c President Antanas Smetona stamp (Scott 227).
Figure 4. A 1-litas Aleksandras Stulginskis stamp (Scott 480).
Figure 5. A 40c Kazys Grinius stamp (Scott 533).
In Lithuania's May 17 presidential elections, Dalia Grybauskaite swept to victory with 69.08 percent of the vote. When she is inaugurated on July 12, she will become Lithuania's first woman president. Although running as an independent, she had the support of the conservative Home Land Union — Christian Democratic Party as well as Sajudis, the nationalist union that was at the forefront of the drive for the re-establishment of Lithuanian independence in 1990.
President-elect Grybauskaite's last name means mushroom. Mushroom hunting is a popular activity in Lithuania's forests. A baravykas (Boletus aereus), one of the tastiest and most popular mushrooms, is seen on the 1.20-litas stamp from 1997 (Scott 584) shown in Figure 1.
In winning the election, Grybauskaite defeated five other candidates, four of them male. Algirdas Butkevicius of the Social Democratic Party finished a distant second with just 11.83 percent of the vote. The only other woman in the race, Kazimira Prunskiene of the Peasant Popular Union, finished in fifth place, garnering 3.91 percent of the vote.
Like Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Grybauskaite is a former star basketball player. On average, Lithuanians are tall people, and basketball is the Lithuanian national sport. In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Lithuania returned to Olympic competition for the first time since 1928, winning the bronze medal in basketball. A 60-centas+40c semipostal stamp (Scott B54) commemorating the Third European Basketball Championship held at Kaunas in 1939 is shown in Figure 2. The stamp design features the coat of arms of Kaunas (at that time the capital of Lithuania), a hand and basketball above the rim of a net, and the flags of the competing nations.
Grybauskaite, 53, previously served in the Lithuanian government as vice minister of foreign affairs and finance minister, and in the European Union as European commissioner for financial programming and the budget. She was educated at the Zhadanov University and the Moscow Academy, both in the former Soviet Union, and at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Grybauskaite has stated her admiration for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and has already been dubbed “the Iron Lady of Lithuania.”
Lithuania's first and fourth president was Antanas Smetona (his last name means sour cream). A 10c President Antanas Smetona stamp (Scott 227) is shown in Figure 3. A leader of the Nationalist Union, he was president from 1919-20 and 1926-40. In June 1940, Smetona fled into exile as the Soviets occupied Lithuania. He eventually moved to the United States, where he died in a house fire in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1944.
Aleksandras Stulginskis of the Christian Democrat Party was president from 1920 to 1926. A 1-litas stamp commemorating his life and service (Scott 480) is shown in Figure 4. Stulginskis was arrested by Soviet authorities in 1941 and deported to a labor camp in the Krasnoyarsk region. He survived and was allowed to return to Lithuania in 1956 after the death of Josef Stalin. He died in Kaunas in 1969.
Kazys Grinius was president from June 7 to Dec. 17, 1926. A 40c Kazys Grinius stamp (Scott 533) is shown in Figure 5. A medical doctor by profession, he was a leader of the Peasant Populist Party. His wife and daughter were killed by the Red army in 1918 during Lithuania's war of independence. He had previously served as prime minister, but was deposed by an army coup d'etat after just six months in office as president. He fled to the United States in 1944 when the Soviet Union drove out the Nazis and reoccupied Lithuania. He died in exile in Chicago in 1950.
Vytautas Landsbergis, a musicologist, was Lithuania's first president after the re-establishment of independence on March 11, 1990. He served from that date until Nov. 25, 1992. He served in the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) from 1996 to 2000, and has been a member of the European Parliament since 2000.
Algirdas Brazaukas, a leader of the Labor Party, was president from 1992 to 1998. A former communist, he was always an advocate of Lithuanian independence, even when serving in the communist government.
Valdas Adamkus has served as president of Lithuania twice: 1998-2003 and 2004 to the present. An independent, like Grybauskaite, he had the support of the conservative Home Land Union — Christian Democratic Party. Born in Kaunas in 1926, Adamkus fought in the underground against the Soviet occupation in 1940-41, and fled the country when the Soviets returned in 1944, immigrating to the United States from Germany in 1949. A career U.S. civil servant, he worked in the Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1997.
Rolandas Paksas, who served as president from 2003 to 2004, is, to date, the only European head of state ever to be impeached, convicted and removed from office. A former stunt pilot and head of a large construction company, Paksas previously served as mayor of Vilnius (the Lithuanian capital). After founding the populist Liberal Democratic Party, he was elected president. In 2004, he was impeached and convicted in the Seimas for constitutional violations.
— Rick Miller, senior editor, Linn's Stamp News
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