Poland should consider presidential elections postponement
7962 Mins Read
Poland should consider postponing presidential elections scheduled for May 10 if health and safety conditions can’t be guaranteed, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said on Monday. However he said if it was possible and safe for people to visit shops it would also be possible for them to visit local polling stations to vote, as long as appropriate sanitary conditions were enforced
Poland’s government insisted so far that there was no need to postpone the elections despite calls from opposition candidates for a delay.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Poland has increased by 71 since the last report and has reached 2,055, the Health Ministry stated on Monday. The death toll has risen to 31.
The leader of PiS Jarosław Kaczyński has said that the election must go ahead as planned on 10 May. The PiS caucus in the early hours of Saturday morning voted through an amendment to the electoral code giving voters over 60 the right to vote by post and those in quarantine to vote by post or by proxy. The opposition argues that the election should not go ahead in times of national emergency and has called on the government to declare a state of emergency. If a state of emergency is declared the election would not take place until 90 days after it was lifted.
President Andrzej Duda, in Monday’s Q&A session on facebook said that if it was possible and safe for people to visit shops it would also be possible for them to visit local polling stations to vote, as long as appropriate sanitary conditions were enforced. He was not convinced that it was impossible for candidates to campaign in current circumstances, noting that a lot of campaigning has now transferred onto the internet.
Health minister Łukasz Szumowski told journalists that he would make his position on the election date clear around the time of Easter. His deputy Wojciech Maksymowicz (Agreement member) has gone on record saying that the election should not go ahead.
Local government mayors have been arguing against holding the poll. Some have even suggested they would refuse to participate in the organization of the election. Municipalities are responsible for finding the premises and also for helping to organize local precinct election committees which are responsible for making the election operational and for counting the votes.
Deputy Speaker and chair of the PiS parliamentary caucus Ryszard Terlecki warned mayors that should they refuse to cooperate with the electoral process that would be grounds for replacing them with government appointed commissioners. He said that a refusal to organize elections would be an intolerable breach of the law.
