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Lithuanian PM urges discussions to cut number of MPs

Xinhua, September 23, 2016 Adjust font size:

Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said on Thursday that the upcoming parliament should start debates on reducing the number of MPs.

"I think that the new Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) should really start discussing this, since Lithuania's population has decreased," Butkevicius said in an interview on local radio station Ziniu radijas on Thursday.

His response came following the Lithuanian parliament's initial backing of the proposal to reduce the number of MPs from 141 to 111 on Wednesday.

The authors of the proposal claim the number of MPs in Lithuanian parliament should decrease relative to the number of the country's population has shrunk.

Since 1992, when the Baltic country adopted its constitution, the Lithuanian population has decreased from 3.71 million to 2.86 million.

The initiative to decrease the number of MPs faced negative response from political analysts. The decision to cut the number of MPs would make the parliament more vulnerable to corruption, thinks Mazvydas Jastramskis, a political analyst from the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University.

"The lower the number of representatives is, the higher the probability that they could be influenced will be," Jastramskis told Lithuanian national radio LRT.

The number of members of Lithuanian parliament is "rather standard in accordance with the population," if compared to other countries, said Jastramskis.

The new parliament is to start its work mid-November, a month after Lithuania's parliamentary elections are held on Oct. 9, 2016. Endit