Polish vote heralds swing to the right
Poland heads into general elections this weekend with two centre-right parties set to hand a stinging defeat to the governing ex-communists and touch off a struggle over economic policy in the EU’s biggest new member.
The front-running parties say they will form a coalition, which polls suggest could control two-thirds of Poland’s parliament – enough to change the constitution.
But it remains unclear if pro-market economic liberals devoted to reducing state bureaucracy, or a socially conservative party determined to preserve welfare-state protections, will emerge with the upper hand.
In a poll published Friday, the pro-market Civic Platform had 34% support, ahead of the conservative Law and Justice party on 29%.
The GfK Polonia institute questioned 965 Poles from Sept. 17-20 for the survey, which had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Still, another survey earlier this week gave Law and Justice a slight edge, suggesting Poland could mimic Germany, where voters last weekend got cold feet about pro-market changes at the ballot box.
Today’s poll gave the governing Democratic Left Alliance only 4%, not even enough to make the 5% threshold for entering parliament.
Though the party came to power with 41% support in 2001 and saw the country into the European Union last year, its popularity has plummeted amid a string of scandals and its failure to tackle the EU’s highest jobless rate, 17.8 percent.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist and ex-member of the alliance, warned today that the expected lurch to the right could be “dangerous” if it goes too far.
A landslide “would mean the triumph of one side, and every triumph is dangerous because it carries the seed of arrogance, pride and mistakes,” Kwasniewski said on state radio.
The front-running parties, both rooted in the anti-communist Solidarity movement, have promised to govern together in a coalition. But in past days, the tone between them has grown strident.
Law and Justice has said Civic Platform’s plans for a single, 15% income tax rate would help only the rich, and has run TV spots showing food disappearing from a refrigerator to illustrate their contention it will hurt low-income families.
But Jan Rokita, Civic Platform’s candidate to be prime minister, argues that only pro-market reforms can boost business and generate wealth in the former communist country, where the average monthly salary is about 2,500 zlotys (£400).
The next government will face the task of preparing the country to join the euro zone, which will mean painful spending cuts to trim its budget deficit. Both leading parties support adopting the common European currency.
The business community favours a Civic Platform victory, and Poland’s currency, the zloty, fell in Wednesday trading after a poll showed Law and Justice ahead.
If the outcome is very close, the choice over who will be prime minister could be complicated by the fact that Poland also faces presidential elections October 9, with a likely runoff vote two weeks later.
Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s identical twin brother, Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski, is one of two leading candidates in that race.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski has said that if his brother becomes president, he would renounce the premiership in order to spare Poland the confusion of two major leaders who look alike.
A Law and Justice victory on Sunday could thus leave Poland in a state of limbo, waiting to see who would become president, and consequently, prime minister.
Having the Kaczynskis in power would likely mean a tougher line toward Russia, with whom relations recently have been strained. In late summer, the children of Russian diplomats were mugged in Warsaw, an incident that met with a hash reaction from the Kremlin and which was soon followed by attacks in Moscow on two Polish diplomats and a journalist.
“What the Russians did recently is astounding and incredibly drastic,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said in an interview with the Gazeta Wyborcza daily published today, referring to the beatings. “I can’t remember such practices toward diplomats even in Berlin, when Hitler ruled there.”
Just over 30 million of Poland’s 38 million citizens are eligible to vote in Sunday’s election for the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm, and the 100-seat Senate.
Polling stations will open at 6am (5am Irish time) on Sunday and close at 8pm (7pm Irish time). Exit polls and preliminary results will be available soon after the polls close, but official results are not expected until Tuesday.
