As the “4 million Lithuania” initiative faces CEC restrictions, musicians supporting the referendum will hold a concert in Vilnius

As the organizers of the initiative announced, a concert “Freedom preserved for citizenship” will be held on Sunday evening in Vilnius Town Hall Square for those who voted in the referendum. It is stated that “Antikvariniai Kašpirovskis dantys”, “Zhalvarinis”, “TAS”, “Nouvelle”, “Liedogs”, singer Plie, Aurelijs Sirgedas from the group “Siela”, NO DJs (Viktoras Diawara) and other performers will perform at the concert.

“It is necessary to do so that the citizenship of those who were born in Lithuania, but accepted the citizenship of another country, is not destroyed. Only in this way can we “win” more than a million Lithuanians who left Lithuania at various times”, Algirdas Kaušpėdas, the leader of the “Antis” group, is quoted in the report.

With the concert, which will be held on Sunday at 6 p.m., the initiators hope to encourage the country’s residents to participate in the referendum on maintaining dual citizenship. It will be possible to cast your vote at the polling stations until 20:00 of the same day.

ELTA reminds that the authors of the civil initiative “4 million Lithuania” presented last week testified that the CEC prohibits the distribution of a video in the media calling for a vote for multiple citizenship in the referendum.

For its part, the CEC stated that the above-mentioned video can be considered election campaigning and noted that paid political advertising must be clearly marked indicating the source of funds.

On May 12 this year, during the first round of the presidential elections in Lithuania, residents will also vote in a referendum on multiple citizenship. In the referendum ballot, it will be proposed to abandon the sentence currently written in the Constitution: “except for the individual cases provided for by law, no one can be a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania and another state at the same time”.

This provision does not allow the preservation of Lithuanian citizenship after acquiring the citizenship of another state. After the citizens decide, the detailed procedures for acquiring and losing dual citizenship would be provided by the constitutional law. In order for the referendum to be considered to have taken place, more than half of the country’s citizens with the right to vote must participate in it.

Some politicians and experts doubt the success of the referendum because, according to them, the responsible institutions did not pay enough attention to this issue.