Poland’s left-wing government, led by Prime Minister Marek Belka, resigned on Wednesday as the Lower House met in a brief first session following its solid shift to the right in last month’s elections.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski accepted the resignation at a ceremony at the presidential palace later on Wednesday, when he asked the outgoing Cabinet to continue to manage daily government business until the conservative and liberal parties that swept the left from power form a coalition to rule Poland.
The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party finished first in the legislative vote, winning 155 seats in the 460-seat Lower House. Close behind was the liberal Civic Platform (PO), which won 133 seats.
The two, which promised in their election campaigns to root out corruption from the government and the administration and spur economic growth, are in discussions to form a coalition government.
But the talks are moving slowly as the two parties prepare to face off in the second round of a presidential election on Sunday, with opinion polls giving the PO’s Donald Tusk a strong lead over the PiS’s Lech Kaczynski.
The first session of the new Parliament, at which lawmakers rose one by one to take the oath of office, was suspended almost immediately after Belka’s resignation speech, amid disagreement over who should be named speaker of the House.
The PO proposed former defence minister Bronislaw Komorowski for the post, but the PiS rejected the nomination and lodged a motion on Wednesday to suspend the parliamentary session before a vote could be held.
The PiS’s Ludwik Dorn said Komorowski was nominated ”without consulting PiS” in what he called ”an aggressive step”. He insinuated that the move could jeopardise the ongoing coalition talks.
”We cannot be certain that the PO wants to be part of the coalition government,” said Dorn, who heads the PiS’s parliamentary group in the Sejm.
PO leader and presidential candidate Tusk told reporters after the brief opening session that the PiS had struck an agreement with the Samoobrona (Self-Defence) party — whose eclectic leader, Andrzej Lepper, has said he wants the deputy speaker’s post — and the Peasants’ Party to block Komorowski’s nomination.
”Will Andrzej Lepper be the face of the fourth republic of Poland?” Tusk asked rhetorically. ”I will do all I can to prevent that happening.”
Kwasniewski said the rapid adjournment of the opening session of Parliament got the new legislature off to ”a foul start”.
”It would be better if we already knew the name of the new Sejm speaker, who replaces the president if the latter is unable to perform his functions,” Kwasniewski told a press conference.
He said the situation is new in Poland, which emerged from more than 40 years of communist rule in 1989, and that the Constitution does not provide a remedy.
Later on Wednesday, Kwasniewski was expected to confirm the PiS’s Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz in the post of prime minister.
Before Marcinkiewicz formally takes up his duties, his appointment must be approved by Parliament, which will not meet again before next week. — Sapa-AFP