Parliamentary coalition talks open in Poland
The two centre-right parties that emerged from Poland’s weekend election with the most votes were expected to open coalition talks today, but were first trying to agree on who the chief negotiators should be.
Law and Justice took 26.99% of the vote with 155 seats while Civic Platform had 24.14% with 133 seats. Together the parties will have 288 seats in the 460-member lower house, 19 seats short of a majority needed to change the constitution, which both parties advocated.
Conservative Law and Justice has proposed its chief economic expert Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz as the new prime minister and has delegated party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski for coalition talks.
The market-oriented Civic Platform, has expressed surprise that Kaczynski will not head the government and wants his twin brother, Lech, to also take part in the coalition talks.
Lech Kaczynski is Law and Justice’s candidate for president in the October 9 presidential balloting and is currently behind Civic Platform candidate Donald Tusk in the polls.
