LITHUANIAN: Lithuanians go to the polls to decide a tight presidential election race tomorrow, and find the successor to a former stunt pilot ousted over alleged links to the Russian mafia.
Mr Rolandas Paksas was impeached in April after scandal erupted over his relationship with a Russian businessman accused of illegal arms trading, and amid claims that Moscow's intelligence service had infiltrated the president's office.
All those involved denied the charges, but Mr Paksas fell to what he called a conspiracy by the political elite to oust a corruption-busting populist, just as the Baltic nation of 3.5 million people was poised to join NATO and the European Union.
Lithuania's accession was not impeded by the furore, and a member of that perceived elite is now favourite to become head of state for a second time.
Mr Valdas Adamkus (77) was president in 1998-2003, before surprisingly losing to Mr Paksas in a run-off. The independent centrist lost out to Mr Paksas in Lithuania's poor regions, and is trying to garner support there this time with a campaign called "Blossom of Hope".
Mr Adamkus, who returned from the US after Lithuania won independence from the collapsing Soviet Union, consistently leads opinion polls, but seems likely to fall well short of the 50 per cent needed for an outright win.
Second place - and a spot in a June 27th run-off - will be hard fought between four closely-matched rivals.
After impeachment Mr Paksas was banned from seeking re-election, but his rural supporters - many of whom have gained little from a decade of rapid economic growth - could still have a decisive say in the election.
Mr Paksas has backed Ms Kazimira Prunskiene (61), an economist who was the first post-independence prime minister.
Opinion polls give her only 10 per cent of the vote, but she could soar with the support of Mr Paksas.
She may struggle, however, to overtake Ms Vilija Blinkeviciute (44), the social welfare and labour minister who has tapped a rich vein of voter disaffection by promising to improve the lot of Lithuania's disenfranchised.
Ms Blinkeviciute has been challenged for second place in polls by Mr Petras Austrevicius, Lithuania's EU accession negotiator.
The outsider is former journalist Ceslovas Jursenas, who rose to prominence with the late 1980s independence movement, but whose professed atheism works against him in a strongly Catholic country.