AFP - EU budget chief Dalia Grybauskaite looked set to become the first female president of recession-hit Lithuania with a resounding election score Sunday, but her victory hinged on voter turnout.
   
Figures from more than half of Lithuania's polling stations, issued by the national electoral commission, indicated she had won hands down with 66.33 percent of the vote, ahead of Social Democrat Algirdas Butkevicius who scored 12.54 percent.
   
The numbers upheld the trend shown in exit polls, which had predicted 67.9 percent for Grybauskaite, an independent, and 11.8 percent for Butkevicius.
   
Under Lithuanian law, half of the Baltic state's 2.7 million registered voters must take part to enable the candidate who wins a first-round majority to avoid a run-off ballot against the second-ranked rival two weeks later.
   
Partial figures from the electoral commission showed that turnout was within a hair's breadth of the hurdle, at 49.69 percent.
   
Grybauskaite refused to claim victory until the figures were in.
   
"I'll be able to take stock of the situation as soon as official data on turnout is available," she told reporters.
   
"I'm very happy with such voter support, but I would nonetheless like to wait for the final results," she said.
   
Grybauskaite, 53, who has a martial arts black belt and says her political models include Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, has pledged to pull her homeland of 3.34 million "out of the political and economic shadows."
   
She has been a member of the EU's Brussels-based executive European Commission since 2004, when ex-Soviet Lithuania joined the bloc.
   
From that position, she regularly crossed swords over the economy with Lithuania's Social Democrats, who lost office in a general election last October, claiming they squandered a now-defunct economic boom and failed to prepare for the ever-deepening recession.
   
Grybauskaite won the backing of the ruling Conservatives, who did not put up a candidate. She has nevertheless warned them that she also had a critical eye on their government.
   
The president's main role is to steer foreign policy, but Grybauskaite had said the economic crisis calls for a more active role on the home front.
   
"She is coming with a very clear message of change," Conservative Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said.
   
Grybauskaite entered the race in February, after public anger over Lithuania's deepening economic crisis and ingrained distrust in politicians erupted into a riot outside parliament.
   
"My conscience as a citizen wouldn't let me stay in Brussels," she told AFP ahead of the election.
   
"I did what I could from Brussels, criticising and commenting, but it wasn't effective enough," she said.
   
"One of the first tasks will be to solve this crisis, to try to stabilise Lithuania's financial position so that the country can climb back up the curve as fast as possible," she added.
   
Lithuania's non-partisan President Valdas Adamkus, 82, is retiring after serving two five-year terms, and his successor is due to take the reins in July.
   
Grybauskaite studied and taught political economy during the Soviet era and began her public career after Lithuania broke free from Moscow's rule in 1990.
   
She was deputy finance minister from 1999 to 2000, deputy foreign minister in 2000, and finance minister from 2001 to 2004.
   
The partial results showed Valentinas Mazuronis, of the populist Order and Justice party, had scored 7.08 percent; Loreta Grauziniene, of the populist Labour Party, 4.62 percent; Kazimira Prunskiene, of the National Farmers' Party, 4.46 percent; Valdemar Tomasevski, leader of Lithuania's Polish-speaking minority, 4.26 percent; and independent Ceslovas Jezerskas, 0.71 percent.