Tusk seeks mandate to continue gradual reform
Source: Agencies |
October 10, 2011, Monday
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POLAND voted in a parliamentary election yesterday that could give Prime Minister Donald Tusk's center-right Civic Platform four more years in power to pursue gradual economic reforms and preserve political stability.
Opinion polls show no party will win an outright majority and another four years of coalition government are likely in the country of more than 38 million people after Civic Platform's four-year alliance with the Peasants' Party.
The polls put ex-premier Jaroslaw Kacynski's conservative-nationalist Law and Justice party in second place. His return to power after four years in opposition could strain ties with Russia and Germany but is widely considered unlikely because his party would struggle to forge a coalition.
Tusk, 54, portrays himself as a guardian of stability. A mild-mannered pragmatist with a common touch, he has eschewed radical economic reforms, avoided talk of austerity despite a large budget deficit and promised to continue cautious reforms.
Law and Justice has promised more state involvement in the economy, including a bank tax and higher taxes for the rich, and vowed to wind down large-scale privatization.
"PO (Civic Platform) should continue to govern because they have done a great deal. Just look at the roads," said Maria Mlodzikowska, an 80-year-old retired physical education teacher, after voting in Warsaw.
But Jan Mazur, a 74-year-old retired printer, said he voted for Law and Justice for the sake of his grandchildren.
"I don't want them to grow up in a country that owns nothing because the PO has sold everything off under the pretext of what they call privatization," he said.
More than 30 million people are eligible to vote to elect 460 lawmakers in the lower house, the Sejm, and 100 to the upper chamber, the Senate.
Police said two polling stations in the eastern city of Lublin were closed because of a bomb scare but reported no other problems.
Tusk has sought stable ties with Russia and Germany, its largest and most powerful neighbors. Kaczynski, 62, deeply distrusts the countries which carved up Poland under a Nazi-Soviet pact before World War Two.
Opinion polls show no party will win an outright majority and another four years of coalition government are likely in the country of more than 38 million people after Civic Platform's four-year alliance with the Peasants' Party.
The polls put ex-premier Jaroslaw Kacynski's conservative-nationalist Law and Justice party in second place. His return to power after four years in opposition could strain ties with Russia and Germany but is widely considered unlikely because his party would struggle to forge a coalition.
Tusk, 54, portrays himself as a guardian of stability. A mild-mannered pragmatist with a common touch, he has eschewed radical economic reforms, avoided talk of austerity despite a large budget deficit and promised to continue cautious reforms.
Law and Justice has promised more state involvement in the economy, including a bank tax and higher taxes for the rich, and vowed to wind down large-scale privatization.
"PO (Civic Platform) should continue to govern because they have done a great deal. Just look at the roads," said Maria Mlodzikowska, an 80-year-old retired physical education teacher, after voting in Warsaw.
But Jan Mazur, a 74-year-old retired printer, said he voted for Law and Justice for the sake of his grandchildren.
"I don't want them to grow up in a country that owns nothing because the PO has sold everything off under the pretext of what they call privatization," he said.
More than 30 million people are eligible to vote to elect 460 lawmakers in the lower house, the Sejm, and 100 to the upper chamber, the Senate.
Police said two polling stations in the eastern city of Lublin were closed because of a bomb scare but reported no other problems.
Tusk has sought stable ties with Russia and Germany, its largest and most powerful neighbors. Kaczynski, 62, deeply distrusts the countries which carved up Poland under a Nazi-Soviet pact before World War Two.
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