Poland's Kaczynskis lose election

[Marulus]

Poland's Kaczynskis lose election

By Gabriela Baczynska and Katarzyna Pieniadz

Sun Oct 21, 7:13 PM ET

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's conservative Kaczynski twins were beaten in a parliamentary election on Sunday by a centre-right opposition party ready to mend relations with EU allies, speed economic reforms and pull troops from Iraq.

The Civic Platform's victory over the ruling Law and Justice party, with the biggest turnout since the fall of communism nearly two decades ago, appeared to be a rejection of two years of turbulent rule by the nationalist twins.

Exit polls showed the Civic Platform won around 44 percent of the vote. Law and Justice had just over 30 percent.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski conceded defeat. His brother Lech, the president, does not face an election until 2010 but opposition parties together looked set to get enough seats to trump his power to veto legislation.

"The Platform's role will be to return Poland to the heart of Europe," said Bronislaw Komorowski, a top Platform official.

Civic Platform leader Donald Tusk, expected to be the next prime minister, said he welcomed the mandate for change given by the 55 percent turnout: "We are moved that Poles went to cast their ballots."

The Civic Platform appeared to be a few seats short of being able to govern alone, but the centrist Peasants' Party said it was ready for coalition talks. A leftist bloc said it would remain in opposition but support pro-EU policies.

The result by the Platform was the best by any party since communism.
"We have failed against a wide front," the prime minister said. "We will be a decisive, tough opposition."

The election was called two years early after his last coalition collapsed amid acrimony over a corruption investigation. He had put the fight against post-communist graft at the heart of his campaign.

DIVIDE

The opposition's strength is among youths and in cities enjoying the fastest growth for a decade. The Kaczynskis have more support among staunchly Catholic Poles and older people in rural areas who feel left out by years of change.

"Finally! The situation we had here was impossible, unbearable," said Marek Stepien, a building worker celebrating in the city of Gdansk.

The Platform was also the favorite of financial markets, which expect reforms such as tax cuts and privatization that would also help the country of 38 million towards adopting the euro currency.

"This is a far better outcome than generally expected and is likely to be taken very positively by the markets," said Silja Sepping of Lehman Brothers. The zloty has been at a 5-year high on expectations of a Civic Platform win.

A senior Platform official said the party would seek to bring home some 900 troops from the U.S.-led force in Iraq and also made clear it toughen its stance with Washington over plans for controversial "missile shield" installations in Poland.

Above all, the party aims to rebuild ties with EU partners such as Germany that have been badly strained under the Kaczynskis.


"There will be a huge change in style. Poland's credibility will be rebuilt," said Zbigniew Lewicki of Warsaw University.

"We have a chance to become a normal European country. This is the end of a dark period for this country. It is over now and it is over before serious damage had been done."

A Platform official said the party would aim to quickly ratify a new EU treaty over which the Kaczynskis had wrangled to win voting concessions to the despair of EU leaders.

Turnout was the highest for a parliamentary election since 1989. That compared to 40 percent in 2005, when the low voter participation helped the Kaczynskis.

Exit polls indicated that the opposition parties would together get the three-fifths of the 460 seats that they need in the lower house of parliament to be able to stop the president using his veto powers as long as they are united.
The polls suggested Civic Platform could have won 70 of the 100 seats in the Senate. Final results are expected on Tuesday.

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[Marulus]

Polish vote winners to seek 2008 Iraq pullout

Sun Oct 21, 2007

WARSAW, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Poland's Civic Platform, poised to form the next government after winning Sunday's parliamentary election, said it would seek to pull out Polish troops from Iraq in 2008.

"Polish troops should withdraw from Iraq in 2008 because our mission has already been fulfilled," Bogdan Zdrojewski, head of the party's parliamentary caucus, told Reuters by telephone.

He said the centre-right party could break the outgoing government's negotiations with the United States on hosting a missile defence system on Polish soil unless Washington offered sufficient security trade-offs.

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[Marulus]

Europe relieved as Poland's Kaczynskis lose grip

Mon Oct 22, 2007

By Matthew Tostevin

WARSAW (Reuters) - Many European leaders gasped with relief on Monday after Poland's Kaczynski twins suffered an election defeat that should swing the country's pro-Washington outlook more towards Brussels.

Donald Tusk's Civic Platform opposition, a center-right party that plans to patch up relations with Europe and withdraw troops from the U.S.-led force in Iraq, pulled off a crushing victory in a parliamentary election on Sunday.

"It is a good signal for Europe. And things will surely get a bit easier between Germany and Poland," European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering told reporters in Berlin.

"One is always happy when a committed European becomes head of a new government."

During two years in power, the conservative Kaczynskis -- one is president and the other prime minister -- have tumbled into quarrels with EU partners on everything from a new treaty for the bloc to relations with Russia to cod fish quotas to a day to mark abolition of the death penalty.

The lowest point of many lows was when the former child film stars invoked Poland's suffering under World War Two Nazi occupation to argue for a bigger share of EU voting rights.

"I am confident that there will be fruitful cooperation with the next Polish government," Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Union's executive arm, said in a statement.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski is likely to be replaced by Tusk. His brother Lech, the president, does not face an election until 2010, but pro-EU parties are expected to have enough votes to block his power to veto legislation.

"In terms of style and language the new approach will be completely different. Civic Platform will not make a dramatic change of policy, but they will be most welcome in Europe," said Lena Bobinska of Warsaw's Institute of Public Affairs.

"Probably the policy will be less pro-American, but they (relations with Washington) don't have to be worse than before. Poland's relations with Germany will improve and that is very good for the U.S. It wants a strong Poland in Europe."

HISTORY

With a world view rooted in Poland's suffering at the hands of centuries-old foes Germany and Russia, the Kaczynskis have always made clear they saw the United States as the only ally that matters.

The Civic Platform has said it wants to bring home the 900 Polish troops in Iraq by early next year. It has not said it would end the mission in Afghanistan.

The party has emphasised that it intends to toughen Poland's negotiating position over plans to site installations for a controversial U.S. "missile shield" on Polish soil -- although not to stop those plans.

"The relationship between the United States and Poland is a very close one regardless of the composition of the government," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a visit in Kiev.

"We clearly are hopeful that the kind of cooperation we have enjoyed recently both in Iraq and Afghanistan ... and in moving toward negotiations and an agreement on missile defence will continue as before," he said.

Moscow, which strongly opposes the missile shield, will be pleased by the election blow to the Kaczynskis.

Poland's relations with its former Soviet overlord have never been very warm since the end of communism, but got even frostier under the Kaczynskis -- complicated by the missile shield, energy issues and a Russian ban on Polish meat.

"Today positive signals are coming from Warsaw about the need to overcome stagnation in relations," said Vasily Likhachev, deputy chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of parliament.

"These signals will result not only in improving dialogue between Moscow and Warsaw but also in improving European dialogue."

(Additional reporting by Claudia Kade in Berlin, Marcin Grajewski in Brussels, Oleg Shchedrov in Moscow)

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