AP News, August 25th, 2007
Poland's Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski is gambling big.
He and his Law and Justice party could remain in office for two more years. Instead, he is pushing for elections this fall, even though polls show his party is likely to lose.
It might seem risky, or even irrational. But Kaczynski and his political allies say it makes perfect sense.
They argue they can no longer push their conservative agenda following the collapse this month of a coalition with two unpredictable populist parties. And they are banking on their well-disciplined party machine to repeat its history of surprise victories.
"We are counting on very good results," Kaczynski told reporters in Warsaw on Friday.
Members of the opposition, however, are questioning why a ruling party would pull the plug on its own government. They suggest something more insidious lurks beneath the surface.
Kaczynski risks not only losing power but also his unique advantage of cooperation with the country's president _ his twin brother, Lech.
Prime Minister Kaczynski's party has recently faced allegations of abusing its power by using the Anti-Corruption Office, a state body it set up, to entrap political foes.
Allegations have also been raised of the secret services tapping journalists' phones and spying on opposition politicians, including Jaroslaw Walesa, the son of former Polish President Lech Walesa.
Several parties are calling for parliament to set up commissions to investigate various allegations of wrongdoing. They say Law and Justice may want to exit government to take the steam out of that drive.
"There are far-reaching suspicions concerning them," Jan Rokita, a prominent lawmaker with the Civic Platform party, told The Associated Press. Kaczynski's party, he said, is afraid a commission would "examine their crimes."
Kaczynski's nationalist Law and Justice party won parliamentary elections in September 2005, beating Civic Platform, a center-right and pro-business group, by a slim margin despite polls that predicted a Civic Platform victory. Since then, Law and Justice has presided over unending instability _ ruling first as a minority government, then in a coalition with populist parties that collapsed earlier this month.
As a way out of the turmoil, Kaczynski has pushed for early elections, possibly on Oct. 21. Parliament is due to vote on Sept. 7 on whether to dissolve itself, which would trigger a new election.
A prominent Law and Justice lawmaker, Jolanta Szczypinska, told the AP that her party is placing the country's interests first by submitting itself to the voters again.
"We are responsible, and we think that it makes no sense to continue a coalition that is not living up to expectations," Szczypinska said. "We don't want to govern for governing's sake _ we want to change Poland."
Poland is in negotiations with the United States on whether to host 10 interceptors that would be part of a missile defense system that Washington says would protect Europe from long-range missile attacks from Iran.
The president was in Washington last month, and at the time indicated that Poland was very likely to agree to the plan despite Russian opposition.
However, a final decision would probably need to go to the Polish parliament. It is unclear what impact the political uncertainty might have.
Since communism fell, no Polish government has won re-election. The previous government led by the ex-communist Democratic Left Alliance was voted out in 2005, winning only 11 percent of the vote amid corruption scandals.
