Poland’s Law and Justice boosted by opposition’s failure to unite

 

Poland’s biggest opposition party is to fight October’s general election without having forged a broad anti-government alliance, giving a boost to the ruling Law and Justice party in its bid for a second term.

Civic Platform said on Thursday that it had decided after negotiations with smaller parties not to enter an inclusive tie-up that would have left the opposition to Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s ruling party less fragmented.

Grzegorz Schetyna, Civic Platform’s leader, said the party would go into the election alongside only two small liberal groupings. “This won’t be a coalition of political parties anymore,” he said at a press conference on Thursday.

Since an unexpected defeat in European parliament elections this May, Poland’s opposition parties have struggled to create a united front and present a common manifesto to voters.

According to an opinion poll conducted this week by the Warsaw-based Institute for Social and Market Research (Ibris), if the parties enter the election without alliances, Law and Justice could expect to win 43 per cent of votes while Civic Platform would get 26 per cent and the Democratic Left Alliance, the once-powerful post-communist party, would receive less than 6 per cent of votes. Other opposition parties would not get any seats in the parliament.

 

Via Financial Times