Politics
As the municipality is the most populous, and as it includes the capital city of Lithuania, it is very important. It has the largest city council. Since April, 2011 the mayor of Vilnius is Artūras Zuokas.
Some of the actions of the municipality government were pioneering the ideas in Lithuania or even the world. The innovative actions were such as letting people always see the mayor's office online over a webcam, giving people free bikes to ride with and otherwise promoting bike travel (which was not popular before), banning of any public alcohol consumption (previously not done in Lithuania), installing TV sets in public transportation, allowing tall skyscrapers near city centre (previously undone in Lithuania) and others. As mayor Artūras Zuokas said, it is a problem of Lithuania and other Eastern European societies that one has to prove that the idea has been done in different western European or American cities before anyone takes you seriously that it would work in Lithuania; he thinks that instead Lithuanians should not be afraid to be the first in the world to do various things and let others to follow.
Read more about this topic: Vilnius City Municipality
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilization and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)