Polish president names two candidates for prime minister

President Andrzej Duda has named two serious candidates for the position of prime minister and two political forces declaring readiness to form a new government, despite the ruling PiS party not having secured a parliamentary majority in elections on 15 October, on Thursday.

Although it was the conservative PiS party that came first in the elections, Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO, EPP), together with the centrist Third Way (Renew/EPP) alliance and the Left (S&D), won more than 54% of the votes and secured a majority of 248 seats in the 460-seat Sejm, the lower house of the parliament.

Still, after consultations with the parliamentary parties’ leaders, Duda was reluctant to rule out his own former party forming a new government. “Today we have two serious candidates for the position of prime minister and two political groups that claim to have a parliamentary majority,” he said in Thursday’s announcement.

Those are PiS with incumbent Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the opposition bloc that has chosen Donald Tusk to be their candidate, Duda explained.

“This is a new situation in our democratic standards,” he said, referring to a situation in which, according to him, two opposing camps have a high chance of forming a cabinet.

Even if numbers suggest otherwise, Duda said PiS leadership declared that it was able to secure the majority in the Sejm. For that, it would have to convince the Polish People’s Party (PSL, EPP), a member of the Third Way bloc, to join the right-wing coalition.

This seems hardly possible, though, with PSL leader Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz saying his party would cooperate with KO, the Left and Poland 2050, its partner from the Third Way alliance, and ruling out any collaboration with PiS.

Neither the ultra-conservative Confederation party, perceived by many as a potential coalition partner for PiS, pledged their support for the party led by Jarosław Kaczyński.

The president’s announcement met with criticism from the opposition politicians, who argued that the current opposition with Tusk as a candidate for prime minister has a much bigger chance to form a government, as indicated by the numbers.

“There are no two equal halves here,” Left MP Wojciech Konieczny told private TVN24 broadcaster, suggesting that Duda wants to give Morawiecki more time to secure a majority and that Morawiecki lied to Duda about PiS’ ability to do so.

“What makes a man a man is not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them. Morawiecki ends up as a clown,” KO MP Kamila Gasiuk-Pihowicz wrote on the X platform, referring to the famous quote by Guillermo del Toro.

Meanwhile, even though the democratic opposition parties have reached a consensus about Tusk being prime minister in their government, some wonder if Kosiniak-Kamysz would not be a better candidate.

Tusk is much more popular abroad, including in Brussels. Still, the PSL leader is a less controversial and divisive figure than the former European Council President, PSL MP Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski told Wprost weekly.

The new parliament will begin its work in mid-November, with the inauguration sitting scheduled for 13 November, as announced by the president. The government will most likely be appointed afterwards, as Duda said he saw no need to shorten the parliament’s term.

(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)