Parliamentary elections kick off in Lithuania

The first round of the Lithuanian parliamentary elections kicked off here on Sunday, for the election of 141 members of the Baltic country's parliament for a four-year term.

According to Lithuania's Central Electoral Commission (CEC), 1,415 candidates from 12 parties and two electoral coalitions attended the elections of Seimas, the unicameral parliament of Lithuania.

Public opinion polls showed the most popular parties are the Social Democrats, the Lithuanian Peasant and Green's Union (LPGU) and the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats.

Together with the Labour Party and Order and Justice, the Social Democrats party is among the current ruling coalition.

During the early voting on Wednesday, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite told media that she had voted for "change which would lead to the stable growth of welfare," urging people to vote actively and cast their votes responsibly.

According to the CEC, some 87,280 voters, or 3.5 percent of Lithuania's eligible voters, cast their bollots during the two days of the early voting, in comparison with 63,262 voters or 2.47 percent of the total number of voters the in the early voting in 2012.

"Judged from experience, higher activity during early voting usually means relatively higher activity on the main voting day," Zenonas Vaigauskas, head of the CEC, told media.

A total of 71 members of the 141-seat Seimas will be elected in single-seat constituencies, and other 70 MPs are to be elected by proportional representation in a single nationwide multi-seat constituency. A party needs to win at least 5 percent of the votes to enter the Seimas. For electoral coalitions, the threshold is 7 percent.

The first round of the voting will decide how elected parties share the 70 seats, while the second round to be held on Oct. 23 will finally show the results in the 71 single-seat constituencies. Endi