Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania (Polish: Akcja Wyborcza Polaków na Litwie, AWPL; Lithuanian: Lietuvos lenkų rinkimų akcija, LLRA) is a political party in Lithuania. It represents the Polish minority and positions itself as Christian democratic. It has 8 seats in the Seimas, 1 seat in the European Parliament, and 11 seats in coalition with the Russian Alliance in the Vilnius City Municipality.
Formed in 1994 from the political wing of the Association of Poles in Lithuania, AWPL experienced a surge in support in the 2000s, under the leadership of Waldemar Tomaszewski. It increased its representation from under 2% in 2000, leading to the party being invited to join the governing coalition: an invite they rejected. They increased their vote again to 3.8% in 2004 and 4.8% in the most recent election, in 2008: just short of the 5% election threshold for any of the Seimas's 70 proportional representation seats. In the 2009 European election, they won 8.2% and one seat. The party's vote is concentrated in the south-east of the country, around the capital, where the Polish minority is located. At the 2012 election, AWPL broke through 5% in a parliamentary election for the first time: qualifying for proportional representation seats.
In the Seimas, the party sits with fellow centre-right party Order and Justice. AWPL's MEP, leader Waldemar Tomaszewski, sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists, which includes the Polish Law and Justice and Poland Comes First, and the party is a member of the AECR.
Read more about Electoral Action Of Poles In Lithuania: History, Ideology, External Relations, Election Results, Leaders
Famous quotes containing the words electoral, action and/or poles:
“Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)