Report about error

At first, the Satanic Mass of Garliava moved to television. On all channels, the all-Lithuanian judge, Neringa Venckienė, was condemning the entire state leadership, including President Dalia Grybauskaitė, calling them fiends, perverts, dogs, and using other legal terms so characteristic of this particular jurist but which, in the President’s view, are not sufficient basis for sacking a judge, Rimvydas Valatka writes in 15min.lt.

So what could have happened in Garliava that sent the entire swamp fauna raving mad, Parliament Members running to and fro, a circle of fanatics ravaging a Chicago suburb, while previously rather sensible Vytautas Landsbergis with his medical diagnoses managed to sound even more lunatic than Venckienė herself?

Nothing supernatural, really. A court bailiff, assisted by a police force, finally managed to carry out a court order (and those, according to our intellectual anarchists, only merit implementation if approved by the council of civil lunatics). A child – who has spent the last few years as hostage to conspiracy theory-obsessed adults – was finally taken from her grandparents’ house (that was turned into a well-run madhouse) and handed to her biological mother.

The police have shown that Lithuania is still ruled by law. On Thursday, to the surprise of many not only in Garliava but the entire country, it turned out that the state still has a police force staffed with professionals able to make and carry out decisions.

The anarchists were wrong in thinking that it only takes to destroy the State Security Department and you can readily dance can-can on the state’s dead body.

Up until Thursday morning, one could indeed be excused for thinking that the state had succumbed to several hundred loudmouths.

Up until Thursday morning, one could indeed be excused for thinking that the state had succumbed to several hundred loudmouths, excited by occasionally surfacing smuggling or crime barons. Schemes of the latter somehow coincided with those of “the nation’s father” Landsbergis, labile-tempered Parliament Members (former and present), and self-proclaimed civil society engineers of relatively sound minds.

Such symbiosis is indeed unheard-of anywhere else. But this is Lithuania, a land where it is often hard to tell sensible people from the intellectually challenged.

The Garliava lunatics had almost convinced themselves that it was them running the country. Venckienė’s outbursts on Thursday prove that the move by the police was indeed unexpected to her. Perhaps because the state still resists the anarchists. Or was it because this time no one leaked the information?

There are good reasons to roar. Having lost the eight-year-old hostage, Venckienė also lost a flagship that kept the Garliava mob together.

Their slogan was “We’re not giving her away at any cost!” What is left once they did give her away? Only carry on with what started this entire medieval story. But the killer is already six feet under. Secondly, more bloodshed would only further divide the heterogeneous Kedyist movement that will crack after every political move anyway. How long can a Soviet dissident, priest Robertas Grigas, and a former Foreign Minister of ex-communists’ Government, Povilas Gylys, promenade hand in hand along the Gediminas avenue?

The fact that Saturday’s protests were attended by merely 700 kedophiles proves that the rearguard of Venckienė & co is rather weak.

Then how come she is able to make so much noise? History has taught us this: no one on this earth has yet outcried anarchists, pogrom-makers, religious fanatics, and ordinary hooligans. A case in  point – English and Polish football fans.

On the other hand, Venckienė – who is playing victim with crude sentimental flair – has already secured a parliamentary mandate from the Kaunas district constituency. It was Kaunas that gave us the first parliamentary “beggars’ king” (Vytautas Šustauskas), it will be the same voters to delegate the first foul-mouthed judge who does not shun from hitting a police officer.

There are just a few strange but interconnected details that are surprising in this story.

One surprising thing is the abundance of MPs hitting their chests “for the girl.” To be more precise, one is surprised by inability of these “politicians” to make simple calculations: The Kaunas district constituency (that Garliava is a part of) can only delegate one MP, not ten, and Venckienė is certain to get it.

The second curiosity – curiosity squared – is the President’s solemn announcement on Thursday morning, ordering to investigate everything that happened that day. My colleague Artūras Račas is right: What is there to investigate, if the court order is finally implemented, while the President made no demands to investigate the previous failure to do so? Above all, why did the President need to air a televised address – was the country invaded by Martians? Did the nuclear reactor explode? The reaction was disproportionate to the status of the head of state.

The third curiosity is even bigger. Why is Venckienė – who has repeatedly urged the society to ignore the law and upturn the state – is still a Kaunas district judge? Well, it doesn’t take a genius to answer this one. It is because for the last few years, the President was frightened into tolerating the anti-legal actions of this judge and her street-level demeanour.

No wonder that Grybauskaitė herself was declared number one target for the mob by the likes of Kuolys, Ozolas, and Oželytė. Lunatics know no middle – whoever is not with them, is against them.

Darius Kuolys – quite appropriately to a wannabe forearm of the lunatic army – declared that the President’s actions on Thursday morning were like those of Gorbachev on 13 January 1991. In other words: it was Grybauskaitė who ordered the police to storm the Kedys fortress, while pretending to not know a thing. Good move – intimidating the President is the only realistic chance for the failed politicians rallying under the purple flag of a dead murderer.

If Grybauskaitė takes fright of those who shout under her office windows and chase her cortège in Lemont, situation in Garliava can poison the entire country.

That is why they do their best to move the Satanic Mass from Garliava to the Presidential Palace. This is where leaders of the lunatics can spread conspiracy theories most easily – occasionally pointing at the President – and claim that justice is best done without courts, evidence, and, of course, the presumption of innocence.

Lynching is so much easier than the long and intricate judicial ways. It’s a DIY justice, based on the sixth sense of a Garliava hairdresser or a neighbour who can smell paedophilia a mile away. And these hunches will be readily substantiated by a seal of the old national apostles eager to make a political comeback – Gylys, Landsbergis, Matulevičius, Kuolys, Ozolas, or Oželytė.

The President, who was playing with fire tolerating Venckienė and lost her way intricately rationalising that the unimplemented court order was in fact implemented, has alienated supporters of the rule of law and is now left alone to face a small but fanatic crowd of lunatics. What is she to do?

She could finally acknowledge her mistakes and start correcting them, thus calming the flames a little. She could fire Venckienė from the judge office. But I somehow suspect that Grybauskaitė will stick to her usual ways. If I am right, she will continue playing the cards dealt to her by the lunatics. For example, she might sacrifice the head of the Police chief. Or she’ll find another scapegoat.

In that case, to rephrase Venckienė’s own words, if it was scary in the past,  something unimaginable can happen in the future. To the state, of course, not to Venckienė. The likes of her usually get away with murder, as popular saying goes. The lunatics will do everything to make sure that happens. To trample underfoot everyone who had, until last week, felt ashamed of their state intimidated by hysteria of Garliava lunatics.