Parliamentary whips of the parties in the ruling coalition issued an ultimatum Tuesday to MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis to either apologize for anti-Semitic statements he made on facebook before the NATO summit meeting in Vilnius on July 11 or face impeachment and removal from parliament.

Opposition parties refused to sign on to the statement.

Žemaitaitis said in response: “I don’t see why I should apologize.”

“They can go bravely forward and initiate my impeachment, but let’s wait and see what the European Court of Human Rights and the people have to say about that,” he added.

In an interview on LNK evening news Tuesday Žemaitaitis was even more truculent, saying sarcastically his hair was standing on end in fear of his possible impeachment and the loss of his post as an elected member of the Lithuanian parliament. He added, also sarcastically, he was afraid of losing his benefits and pension as a Lithuanian MP.

On March 16, 2017, the Lithuanian parliament decided not to impeach MP Mindaugas Bastys of the Social Democracy Party for allegedly posing a national security threat due to ties with Russian business and media. Bastys then resigned as deputy speaker of parliament but denied any wrong doing. On April 6, 2004, the Lithuanian parliament held a secret ballot and removed standing president Rolandas Paksas, a member of the Lithuanian Conservative Party before he was elected president, again allegedly for having too-strong ties with Russia, following an internal power struggle with former president Valdas Adamkus, independence leader Vytautas Landsbergis and the then-chief of Lithuania’s State Security Department Mečys Laurinkus. Reuters and Voice of America reported it was the first removal of a European head of state by impeachment ever. Žemaitaitis served as an advisor to Rolandas Paksas and Vilnius major Juozas Imbrasas in 2009. He was elected to the Lithuanian parliament under Paksas’s Law and Order Party in 2016 and then became the chairman of the same party, now renamed the Freedom and Justice Party. in 2020. His party removed him because of the spate of anti-Semitic statements he has made over the past two months.

Žemaitaitis originally criticized the Israeli demolition of an EU-financed Palestinian school in the occupied West Bank on facebook, but quickly moved to open support of anti-Semitic positions on the social media forum and in public statements to the media, blaming Lithuanian Jews for the alleged genocide of ethnic Lithuanians in the Soviet Union.

His impeachment and removal would require a majority vote in the parliament, numbers the ruling coalition probably doesn’t have.

Full article in Lithuanian here.