Candidates Neck and Neck in Lithuania Runoff Vote

VILNIUS, Lithuania —  An out spoken opponent of organized crime held a wafer-thin edge Sunday in a presidential runoff election that pitted two political newcomers with no significant ideological differences.

With about 95% of the vote tallied, former prosecutor general Arturas Paulauskas had 49.61%, while Lithuanian American Valdas Adamkus had received 49.58%.

But the vote count shifted repeatedly in the hours after polls closed, sometimes showing Adamkus in the lead. It could easily shift again.

“I do not see any tragedy if one or another candidate wins. They sound so similar to me,” said Galina Meiziene, 32. About 67% of the electorate voted.

Paulauskas, 44, and Adamkus, 72, share many views, including support for market reforms and Lithuanian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

Paulauskas, well-regarded for fighting the organized crime that has soared since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, won the most votes in the first round.

But his 45% fell short of the 50% needed for victory. That forced a runoff against Adamkus, a retired Chicago-area administrator with the Environmental Protection Agency who came in second in the first-round election with 28%.

Adamkus’ prospects were buoyed when he won the endorsement of parliament speaker and third-place finisher Vytautas Landsbergis.

The presidency has relatively little power except in foreign policy issues. Domestic policies are controlled by parliament.

Paulauskas, casting his ballot in a suburb of Vilnius, the capital, said, “People need changes, and people are voting for the future.”

Paulauskas’ work as prosecutor spanned the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, but he has denied that he is the candidate of the old Communist bureaucracy as some opponents claimed.

Adamkus fought Red Army troops in 1944 but was later forced to flee his homeland. “I am confident we will win, we are in high spirits,” he told a news conference.

The defeated Landsbergis led Lithuania to independence after five decades of Soviet rule and resisted a Kremlin military crackdown in 1991 in which 13 people were killed.

But he was judged on his post-independence record, when he tended toward authoritarianism and divided the country rather than consolidated its newly won independence.