| Polish parliament in anticipation of a scandal Today in Warsaw the new parliament, elected on September 25, will convene for its first meeting. For the first time in the post-socialist history of Poland, the inaugural meeting of the Sejm foreshadows a scandal. Immediately after the deputies are sworn in, the work of parliament may be paralyzed due to disagreements surrounding the candidacy of the Marshal of the Sejm.
Two parties won the elections - Law and Justice (PiS) and the Civic Platform (CP), together they control 287 parliamentary seats out of 460. Immediately after the elections, PiS, reserving the right to appoint a prime minister, invited its coalition partner speaker's chair. The GP is considering 53-year-old Bronislaw Komorowski to replace the speaker. He held government positions, including Minister of Defence, in the governments of Mazowiecki, Bielecki, Suchocka and Buzek. However, his harsh statements against PiS greatly complicate the approval of Mr. Komorowski's candidacy.
PiS and the SOE are now in intense competition in the second round of the presidential election, which will take place next Sunday, October 23. SOE leader Donald Tusk is almost 10% ahead of PiS candidate Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski. A victory for Tusk would mean a reshuffling of all key positions in parliament, including deputy marshals, the number of which is also not agreed upon. The chairman of the radical left movement “Self-Defense” (third place in the Sejm with 56 seats), Andrzej Lepper, decided to take advantage of the confusion. He offered himself the role of Marshal of the Sejm “for political balance - so that power does not end up in the same hands.”
To avoid embarrassment, the idea arose immediately after the deputies took the oath to announce a week-long break in the work of the Sejm. By then, it will be known who won the presidential election, and the balance of power will be clarified. However, the opposition believes that postponing the elections will compromise the Sejm, disrupt the procedure for dismissing the government and delay the formation of a new cabinet of ministers, which is already proceeding with difficulty.
Yesterday, President Aleksander Kwasniewski met in turn with the elders of the Sejm and the Senate. After the meeting with the president, the elder of the Sejm, Józef Zych, expressed the opinion that deputies should try to elect the Presidium of the Sejm at the first meeting of the lower house on Wednesday. Pan Kwasniewski thinks the same. In the afternoon, a message came from the presidential administration that a procedure for the resignation of the Council of Ministers was scheduled for October 19 at two o'clock in the afternoon at the presidential palace. Before this, current Prime Minister Marek Belka must announce the resignation of the cabinet at the first meeting of the Sejm.
For Belka, this will be his second resignation since the May government crisis. This time, President Kwasniewski will accept the resignation and instruct Belke to act until the new cabinet is sworn in. But this will happen only after the second round of the presidential elections. Valery MASTEROV, staff correspondent for Moscow News in Warsaw, for Vremya Novostei |
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