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Poles poised to confirm political shift to right in presidential vote
10/10/2005
WARSAW, Oct 9 (AFP): Polling stations opened before sunrise Sunday in Poland for the first round of a presidential election, which is widely expected to cement the former communist country's decisive shift to the right.
Some 30 million voters are eligible to choose a successor to outgoing President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist who is barred by the constitution from running again, having already served two terms.
Leading opinion polls in the run-up to the first round vote has been 48-year-old Donald Tusk, head of the centre-right, business friendly Civic Platform (PO), who was credited with 40 percent of voter intentions in the most recent survey. PO finished second in the legislative election.
Hard on his heels is Warsaw's conservative mayor, Lech Kaczynski, co-founder of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which won the most seats in parliament last month and is in talks with PO to form a coalition government. Thirty-five percent of voters said they would vote for him.
The other candidates trail far behind the two front-runners, with the closest, Andrzej Lepper of Samoobrona (Self-Defence) and Social Democrat Marek Borowski, each credited with around 10 percent of the vote.
Tusk has put himself forward as young, dynamic, and an able negotiator at the head of the economically liberal party he founded in 2001 and still leads.
Kaczynski, eight years Tusk's elder, has based his campaign on his experience and a career unblemished by corruption -- something Polish voters hope to put behind them by taking parliament and the presidency to the right.
The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) which was swept out of parliament by the combined force of PiS and PO, was brought down largely by a series of corruption scandals, which cost SLD prime minister Leszek Miller his job.
Under Poland's constitution, the prime minister is more powerful than the president, who is nevertheless the supreme commander of the armed forces and in charge of deciding foreign policy.
Tusk has said he wants that changed, with the president either given more power or none at all, to make it clear who is the ultimate decision-maker in Poland.
Kaczynski has come out in favour of the president being able to pass decrees, but insisted that parliament should act as a safety net by approving the decrees before they become law.
Probably playing a role in each candidate's view on the powers the president and prime minister should have is their parties' finishing positions in last month's legislative vote.
With PiS finishing in front, taking 155 seats in the 460-seat parliament where PO won 133, the conservative party won the right to name the prime minister.
Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski -- presidential candidate Lech Kaczynski's identical twin -- was the hot favourite for the premiership, but demurred in favour of little-known economics expert, Kasimierz Marcinkiewicz.
That brought criticism from PO that Marcinkiewicz had been chosen as a stop-gap prime minister in order not to dent Lech Kaczynski's chances in the presidential race.
The best known twins in politics in Poland have promised not to subject Poles, or their global political counterparts, to having two men who look the same in the top posts in the country.
Voting stations opened at 6:00 am (0400 GMT) and will remain open until 6:00 pm.
In predominantly Catholic Poland, most voters usually cast their ballot after mid-morning mass.
Last month's legislative election was marred by a turnout of just over 39 percent, the lowest for a national election since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.
The church, which wields great influence in this country where 95 percent of people profess to be Catholic, and political parties have urged Poles to vote in greater number this time around as they choose a new president who will serve for a maximum of two five-year mandates.
If no candidate garners more than 50 percent of the vote Sunday, a second round will be held on October 23.
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