LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 36, No.2 - Summer 1990 Editor of this issue: Antanas V. Dundzila ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1990 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

ELECTION PROGRAM OF SĄJŪDIS

If the candidates supported by Sąjūdis are given mandates to the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR in the February 24,1990, elections, they will seek to restore the independent democratic state of Lithuania and to put into effect the principles of the program.

Lithuania's independence is an essential condition for survival of the nation, for creation of a democratic society and for the security and well-being of the citizens.

Independence — for reborn Lithuania,
Democracy — for 'independent Lithuania,
A decent life — for democratic Lithuania!
Democracy, 'independence and well-being are inseparable!

I. The Main Objectives

1. Policy

A. Foreign policy

—to adopt a resolution of the Lithuanian SSR Supreme Soviet which states that the elections to the People's Seimas of 1940 and the decisions of the Seimas are unlawful and invalid:

—to repeal all constitutional obligations of Lithuania and its citizens to the Soviet Union (service in the Soviet army among them); to alter respective articles of the Constitution of the Lithuanian SSR;

—to proclaim the act of restoration of the Lithuanian state which assumes the rights of the Lithuanian Republic;

—to adopt a Temporary Constitution of the Lithuanian State immediately;

—to begin inter-state negotiations with the USSR in order to change the current status of the Soviet army giving it the status of a foreign army and to determine the date and conditions of its withdrawal;

—to support the idea of a nuclear-free zone in the Baltics and demand urgent removal of nuclear and other mass weapons from the territory of Lithuania;

—to seek neutrality as the essential principle of Lithuania's foreign policy;

—to seek observance of international law in the decolonization of Lithuania;

—to promote bilateral economic and cultural relations with the USSR and other countries;

—to restore diplomatic international contacts and return to the European and world community.

B. Home policy

—to maintain unity and inseparability of Lithuania; to encourage citizens of all nationalities to contribute in the establishment and fortification of an independent Lithuania to foster their patriotic feelings;

—to reorganize the structure of ministeries, defining their new functions and forming an active government which would put reforms into effect;

—to separate legislative, executive and judicial power;

—to set up a system of the country's protection, including Lithuanian police, security bodies, customs services and state control;

—to de-politicize law-enforcement bodies;

—to establish a multi-party system as a guarantee of democracy;

—to enhance the relationship between the state and the Church, according to democratic principles;

—to provide conditions for free trade unions;

—to restrict by law immigration and set up an immigration service;

—to identify and take legal actions against the executors of Stalinist genocide and other crimes against the people of Lithuania.

2. Economy

—to form an economic and agricultural system based on the principles of supply and demand;

—to legitimize all forms of ownership and provide equal conditions for them;

—to carry out a policy of de-nationalization and re-privatization in agriculture, services and trade, as well as local, food and light industries;

—to give the status of an independent firm to all farms and industrial enterprises;

—to create legal and economic conditions for the self-government of towns and districts;

—to provide the necessary conditions and then to establish a system of currency, credit and finance;

—to stabilize Lithuanian national currency and curb inflation;

—to put into effect economic measures which would stimulate individual working activities, personal links of producers with foreign partners, production of high quality goods and utilization of ecological technologies;

—to train experts and improve the qualification of the experience of foreign countries;

—to introduce and carry such payment policy that would enable a person to earn a greater part of a net profit which would satisfy his/her social needs.

3. Culture

—to promote Lithuanian national culture and maintain its identity;

—to support activities of public organizations and the Church in fostering morality, sobriety and a sense of civil responsibility;

—to ensure the use of the Lithuanian language as the state language in official and public activities;

—to abolish censorship and state and party monopoly of mass media;

—to promote education, science and culture and regard this as a very important obligation of the state;

—to foster and promote Lithuanian national awareness in ethnographic Lithuania, and also in Lithuania Minor and among the Lithuanian communities abroad;

—to support the attempts of ethnic groups in fostering their culture;

—to propagate Lithuanian culture abroad and draw up a special state program for this purpose;

—to reform the current system of science and learning, to create conditions for the establishment of institutions of science and learning free from state control;

—to adopt the system of conferring diplomas, scientific titles and degrees corresponding to the acknowledged world practices;

—to prepare a new list of state calendar events.

4. Social Welfare

—to guarantee minimum living standards for all low-income citizens and families which have lost their providers;

—to render support, in the first place, to large families and non-working mothers and to provide young families with credit;

—to ensure adequate living conditions for disabled persons and give them state aid;

—to grant privileges to senior citizens, students and working mothers;

—in restructuring Lithuania's national economy and in rationalizing the system of unemployment, to create conditions for people to be retrained for new professions and get refunds at the state's expense;

—to implement a new policy of providing housing facilities for people in accordance with the requirements of social justice;

—to ensure a periodical revision of salaries and wages, pensions, grants and benefits according to the current level of inflation;

—along with the development of the state healthcare system, to create alternative health centers, and form a system of patients' subscription schemes and health insurance.

5. Nature Protection

—to take urgent steps in saving the ecologically critical zones of Lithuania;

—to create a new nature-protection legislation;

—to promote ecologically clean industries through economic incentives;

—to separate the state organs of nature protection from the executive organs;

—to release the ecological information to the public;

—to discuss, in public, projects which are ecologically dangerous to the environment.

II Plan of Action

1. Politics

Annulment of the annexation. Sajūdis stresses that in 1940 the USSR violated the mutual treaties and committed aggression against the Lithuanian Republic. The USSR overthrew its government and, through coercive and rigged voting, formed the People's Seimas which, consuming the sovereign rights of the nation, announced declarations which served as a cover for the annexation of Lithuania. This gave pretext for the incorporation of Lithuania into the USSR and made its citizens into citizens of the USSR. In 1941-1944 Lithuania was occupied by the German army.

In 1955 the Soviet army occupied Lithuania again and, after the end of the hostilities, did not terminate its occupation. By its undeclared war against the people of Lithuania, the USSR ruined Lithuania's efforts to re-establish the Lithuanian state and, in this way, renewed the annexation which has lasted up until now.

Taking into consideration:

—the continuing international recognition of the independent Lithuanian Republic;

—the aspirations of the people to re-establish an independent state;

—the speedy process of democratization in all of Eastern Europe and the lessening of international tension and disarmament;

—the fact that Lithuania's independence is an indispensable condition in the security of its own internal stability as well as stability in Eastern Europe;

—the powers of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet guaranteed to it by the Lithuanian SSR Constitution,

Sajūdis thinks that it is imperative in the immediate future to annul in a parliamentary and constitutional way the annexation of Lithuania and to announce the act of re-establishment of the Lithuanian state.

In order to annul the annexation it is necessary to:

—declare that the 1940 election of the People's Seimas was illegal;

—declare that the 1940 declarations and resolutions of the People's Seimas are illegal and invalid from the moment of their adoption;

—amend Articles 29 and 30 of the Lithuanian SSR Constitution about the USSR Armed forces, also to repeal Article 61 regarding the duty of the Lithuanian SSR citizens to serve in the USSR armed forces;

—amend Articles 28, 67, 71, 72, 75, 77 and 97 of the Lithuanian SSR Constitution so that the constitutional obligations of the Lithuanian SSR and its citizens to the USSR are repealed;

—amend the heading of chapter 7 and Article 68 which treat Lithuania as a constituent part of the USSR;

—declare an act of the Restoration of an Independent State, confirming the decision of 1918;

—adopt a Temporary Constitution of Lithuania immediately.

After the legal annulment of the annexation, the re-establishment of normal state functions will not be guaranteed unless the status of the USSR army and the date and conditions of its withdrawal are specific in inter-state treaties. Sąjūdis supports Lithuania's neutrality as the ultimate principle of its foreign policy.

Relations with the USSR. Sajūdis calls on the government of the USSR to relinquish all its claims to Lithuania's sovereignty, to cease accusing Lithuania of separatism and to cease treating its relations with her as an internal national issue therefore fanning inter-ethnic hostility.

The present and future relations of Lithuania with the USSR should be based on the recognition of the Independent Lithuanian state, respecting its neutrality and rights in accordance with international law and the basic principles of the Peace Treaty of July 12, 1920.

The USSR should compensate the Lithuanian people for the losses they suffered through genocide, deportations and colonialism. Lithuania should be decolonized according to the principles of international law.

The economic relations with the USSR should be based only on reciprocal state treaties. A stable economic and cultural cooperation between Lithuania and the USSR should be based on the principles of mutual favor, benefit and equality.

The relations between Lithuania and the USSR should be regulated in such a way that the re-emerging Lithuanian state would be decolonized and restored to the community of European nations as the equal rights of the Lithuanian Republic.

2. Economy

Independence and freedom of economic management. The restoration of political independence of the Lithuanian state is a vital condition for a normal functioning of Lithuania's economy. Direct dependence upon the central governing bodies of industrial enterprises, farms and economic organizations on the territory of Lithuania should be eliminated. The system of obligatory state orders should also be eliminated. The command-administrative economic system should involve market relations under moderate state control.

The laws should guarantee equal rights of various forms of ownership, create and maintain competition, and prevent monopolization of the market. Economic measures promoting initiative, private enterprise, relations of producers with foreign partners, production of high quality goods and the introduction of ecologically clean technologies should be implemented. Urgent steps should be taken in training and re-training the economic executive and management personnel in wider use of the assistance of foreign educational institutions and firms.

The state should concern itself only with working out social, scientific — technical, general economic and ecological programs. The central republication departments are to solve only the strategic problems of the economic development, form the strategies of scientific and technological progress, apply the state regulating measures of the firms and forecast the conditions and trends of the market.

The staff of each industrial enterprise has the right lo run its enterprise independently, to be protected from the state command-administrative management and to assume full responsibility for the results of its economic activities. The decision to denationalize a state enterprise or organization should be adopted provided its entire personnel votes for it.

A policy of wages and salaries should be created and implemented providing employees with a possibility of receiving the major share of the net revenue and ensuring, in this way, for everyone's freedom of social choice to meet the needs for housing facilities, health services, education, recreation and other needs.

The law should establish the status of a freely hired worker and regulate the relations of employment. People should be encouraged to work in the same enterprise; the legal category of uninterrupted employment should be rejected.

The reform of the relations of ownership. The relations of ownership in services and industry should be fundamentally revised. For this purpose, it is necessary not only to sell shares or small enterprises, but also to apply various other forms which would give people the possibility to become partial owners of the capital The creation of private farms, as well as reform of the collective farm and Soviet farming systems, must be catalyzed in all respects. The state must guarantee a landworker a realistic right to ownership of land, resources which have been given or earned on a collective farm and the chance to distribute them under set conditions.

The state must guarantee working conditions for private, private joint-stock, state joint-stock, mixed, cooperative and other kinds of firms and companies, control their property obligations and create their insurance system.

Free market and finances. It is necessary to build land, production means, commodities, services, housing, capital, innovations, securities, hard currency and other markets.

In the next two years the present price control system must give way to prices controlled by free market. The creation of the state price control system must go hand in hand with the reform in the wages policies.

The state cannot have monopoly on buying products produced by landworkers, either directly or through collective farms.

It is necessary to establish a Lithuanian customs service.

It is necessary to make an agreement with Latvia and Estonia on the formation of the common Baltic market. Lithuania's relations with foreign countries at the state level can start only after the proclamation of the act on the restoration of the Lithuanian state.

It is necessary to introduce independent Lithuanian currency as the basis for independent Lithuanian economy, its basic monetary unit being litas. State banks of issue of Lithuania and a network of commercial banks also need to be established.

The state must determine equal and generally accepted taxation. The part of the revenue allocated for social and cultural needs must not be taxed.

In order to curb inflation after the issue of Lithuanian currency it is necessary to do the following:

—reduce the mass of circulating money;

—sell bonds of state farms and enterprises, housing, certain means of production and transport, plots of land for the construction of private houses and other state property;

—reduce state expenditure by introducing austere measures of economy on the budget.

The structure of the national economy. Lithuanian national economy must be orientated to industries producing goods which meet domestic needs and are capable of competing on the world market. Priorities must be given to industries which require less raw material (imported in particular) and energy and rely more on intellect and qualifications and are ecologically clean. The state must promote foreign tourism.

3. Culture

National Lithuanian culture. The state must promote national Lithuanian culture and foster its national character, but, at the same time, it must not impede contacts and interaction with world culture.

The state must take care of the historical and cultural heritage and demand the return of the cultural assets taken away from Lithuania. It is the duty of the self-government organs to ensure the preservation of the ethnic character of different Lithuanian regions and the maintenance of cemeteries, monuments and parks.

The administrative bodies must ensure that Lithuanian, as the state language, functions in the offices and public life. An attempt must also be made to help people of other nationalities learn it.

The Lithuanian state and workers in various cultural spheres must concern themselves with the preservation of the Lithuanian spirit in Lithuanian proper, Lithuanian Minor and among the emigration. All the ethnic communities residing in Lithuania must be given cultural autonomies. This will contribute to the expression of Lithuania's cultural wealth.

After a public discussion, a new list of national calendar holidays must be drawn taking into consideration the national and religious traditions.

Fostering of morality—the Church. It is the duty of the state to take care of morality and a sober way of life. The state must support the efforts of the public, its organizations and the Church to foster morality and spirituality, a sober and healthy way of life, respect for the family and civil responsibility.

It is important to continue the promotion of relations between the state and the Church. Requisitioned churches, chapels, parsonages, convents schools and other buildings as well as libraries and cultural and artistic assets must be returned to religious communities and organizations if they agree to maintain this property. By way of compensation for the long period of use, the buildings must be returned in a good state of repair.

The freedom of creation. The holdings of archives and libraries must be open to the public. No ideology can be imposed on artistic self-expression and scientific activity. Censure, restrictions on the dissemination of information, the state and party monopoly on mass media, printing houses, art, science and exchange of culture must be done away with. But, it must be the concern of the state that the universal moral norms should not be violated in educational, artistic or any other activities.

Non-commercial artistic and scientific institutions, creative groups of artists and scientists and individual creators must be given financial support.

Education and science. The state must guarantee the right of the parents to bring up and educate their children according to their convictions. At the same time, the education of children must conform to the reorganized moral norms. The Lithuanian school must be orientated to national and moral values, give a grounding in ethics, morality and self-education and develop the pupils' skills m contemporary computing. The main objective of the Lithuanian school is the versatile development of the personality.

It is obligatory to foster the humanities in higher education and implement the principle of academic freedom. The most gifted students must have a possibility of studying and improving their knowledge abroad. The state must legalize and endorse education-al and research institutions maintained by private, religious and public organizations.

The system of granting diplomas, academic titles and degrees must be reorganized according to the accepted practices in the world.

Physical culture. Together with self-governing bodies, the state must promote and, within its possibilities, endorse sports clubs and clubs of physical education and health. The state budget can be used to finance olympic teams and individual sportsmen.

4. Social Services

Social guarantees. The government bodies must determine, on a regular basis, the subsistence level, minimum wages and other social norms and make them public. With the help of its budget, the state must guarantee the subsistence level to all the citizens, including the unemployed and disabled members of the family. The subsistence level must be continuously adapted to the official indices of prices of consumer goods and services.

It is the responsibility of the state to ensure employment to all the citizens of working age. With the modernization and improvement of industry, the unemployed must be offered several possibilities of changing their qualifications at the expense of the state. During this time, they should officially be regarded as partially employed and be entitled to compensation.

The system of party privileges must be abolished. The situation in social security requires the state to give priority to the needs of mothers, children and families with many children. The privileges of employment for mothers must be enacted by law. For every child of pre-school age brought up at home, the state must pay a monthly compensation, mothers of several children must receive a monthly salary.

It must be the duty of the state to ensure employment to invalids, take care of problems related to public and everyday life, and help the Church and charity organizations to provide care to people who are in need of it. The state must give support to the children's and old people's homes maintained by self-government bodies and parishes. In the bigger cities, homes for various calamity-stricken people should be established. In addition to the state social security system, the state must provide for the establishment and normal functioning of public organizations of this kind (loan and insurance funds, societies, etc.).

Provisions of housing. After evaluation on each state-owned flat has been fixed, the homes should be made available for acquisition by the inhabitants in one of the following ways: by buying, by buying by installment (providing long-term state loans to payers on easy terms) or by renting (to ensure social subsistence levels). If there is a housing list, priorities should be the same for all the citizens and should be based on the number of family members, the size of their floor space and the condition of their living quarters, as well as the time which has passed since the inclusion of the citizens' name in the housing list, etc. To ensure social justice during the transition period, a system of compensation and extra payment for oversized housing space must be introduced.

The housing market must be formed and the construction of dwelling houses encouraged. The state must be responsible for the safety of the citizens' shelter and their mode of life. In case his house is pulled down for social needs, the citizen is entitled to adequate compensation.

Health service. The program of state-supported health service must be effective and purposeful. Hard currency funds must be used for the acquisition of clinical equipment and medicine. Health care and rehabilitation centers must be built and expanded. The production and import of orthopedic and other special articles for the physically disabled is also important.

In addition to the development of a state healthcare system, conditions must be ensured for other kinds of healthcare centers, and the formation of a system of health funds and health insurance.

A law on labor protection must be drafted which would set working conditions that are not harmful and mandate the necessary hygienic materials.

In conjunction with the public organizations and the Church, state programs of prevention of alcoholism, smoking and AIDS must be drawn and implemented.

Trade unions. Trade unions must be free and independent of the state and party or administration control and influence. Trade unions must defend the interests of the employed and renounce their former functions of allocating social privileges and social insurance, which must be regulated by the state through legalization.

5. The State and Law

Democratic system of government. Upon declaring the re-establishment of the state, it is necessary to adopt a Provisional Constitution of Independent Lithuania. It has to provide for a democratic, parliamentary, republican system of government based on the well-defined separation of the three branches of government by popular and free elections. Under the Provisional Constitution, the functions of a president are performed by a collective body of government—Presidium of the Supreme Council. Popularly elected bodies of government must have the power to appoint and to control all other bodies of government within the limits defined by law. The Constitution and laws must guarantee all fundamental human and civil rights and freedoms and their defense in a country of law.

The structures of parties and political organizations should be based on a territorial principle but not on the principle of a common working place.

Offices and posts should be offered irrespective of party affiliation. However, the law may provide that some important government office-holders can be only non-party members. Members of the judiciary and government officials should be people of high moral standards.

Restructuring of government. Courts of law and judiciary bodies should act independently of executive power and be freed from political influence. The judiciary system should comprise town and district courts, regional courts and Supreme Court. It is necessary to establish a Constitutional Court and administrative courts. The Ministry of Internal Affairs should be responsible for state security, fight against crime and maintain law and public order. Militia must be reorganized into state and municipal (in larger towns) police. Investigation bodies, corrective-labor institutions and prisons should be under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice.

An institution of state control must be established and be responsible only to the Supreme Council.

It is necessary to establish a state defense system.

Legal reform. Lithuania's laws must be in accord with the universally recognized principles of international law and reflect a national sense of justice. It is necessary to humanize the penal code and to decline its accusatory orientation.

Citizens of Lithuania cannot be forcibly taken outside Lithuania for work, imprisonment or military service.

It is necessary to adopt a law on immigration.

The law must protect consumers' rights.

Strengthening of law and order. The fight against organized crime should be considered a top-priority task for the state. The state must establish such a judiciary system which could enforce laws, provide for the inevitability of punishment and defend society from criminals. More severe punishment should be administered for violent crimes in order to equalize responsibility for criminal interference with government and private property.

It is necessary to humanize places of confinement and to create there the conditions which would encourage prisoners to come back to honest life.

All those who have committed acts of Stalinist genocide and other crimes against the people of Lithuania must be brought to court for trial.

6. Nature Protection

Help for critical zones. Ecologically critical zones (the Nemunas River, the Curish Bay, the karst region of north Lithuania, the district of Akmenė, the area of Vilnius and Kaunas) need immediate help. 1991 budget allocations for ecological programs must be substantially increased.

The operation of the Ignalina atomic power-station needs an additional appraisal by experts, and, if necessary, the working reactor should be shut down. All the inhabitants of Lithuania should be well-informed about the situation in the power-station and have the right, if need be, to decide its future in a referendum.

It is necessary to gradually reduce the capacities of large industrial enterprises and change their types of production and technology.

As long as the Soviet Army units remain stationed on the territory of Lithuania, all the areas of their deployment should be open for ecological inspection.

The establishment of the planned national parks and nature reserves should not be delayed.

New methods of economic management. The contradictions between our economic interests and the ecological standards of nature protection should be solved in the following three ways:

—expand moral, material and legal responsibility of owners and managers of farms, industrial enterprises, transport and other production associations for the damage to nature and people's health;

—impose taxes for the utilization of natural resources and environmental pollution.

—promote ecologically clean production in industry and agriculture;

Economic strategy for the development of industry, agriculture, transport and power engineering, as well as general plans of town reconstructions, must be adopted and revised with regard to the possible social demographic and ecological consequences. Decisions on the environmentally unacceptable construction projects must be made only after a broad public discussion.

Competence and efficiency. A new system of laws on environmental protection and exploitation should be worked out.

State bodies of environmental protection cannot remain under the jurisdiction of executives and should be responsible only to the Supreme Council.

The environmental agencies of the Republic must establish an effective monitoring system with expertise in ecological information services. All producers should constantly inform them about the import of hazardous materials, their utilization and the disposal of waste products so as to have a balanced overall picture in the Republic. With regard to the recommendations and experience of international organizations, these services should define certain scientifically grounded critical parameters for environmental conditions. The strategy and tactics of ecological policy need to be established.

The strategy of ecological research and projects should be developed on the following major lines:

—reduction of environmental pollution;

—optimal utilization of natural resources like land, water, mineral resources;

—ecological education.

Scientific data about the ecological situation, in general and for each zone, in Lithuania must be available to everyone.

Four former freedom fighters of the 1944-1955 era, appearing 'm public singing the Lithuanian freedom fighters' song, August 70, 1989.
Photo K. Sverys

Demonstration in the city of Kaunas.
Photo V. Kapočius

A commemorative sculpture of suffering Christ unveiled at the Lithuanian Latvian border on August 23, 1989.
Photo K. Sverys