Poland's reformed communists oust Solidarity alliance in elections - exit poll

Poland's reformed communists, the Democratic Left Union (SLD), ousted the ruling Solidarity-AWS government out of power last night. The result of exit polls consigns to history the Solidarity movement that defeated the communist regime in 1989.

The social democratic SLD captured almost 45 per cent of the popular vote, according to a public television exit poll, enough to guarantee them an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament, the Sejm.

"We wanted to win and we won, but Poland has won tonight," said SLD leader Mr Leszek Miller last night.

"It is a great responsibility . . . for the first time since 1989 Poland has given their trust to one party. Now we can get on with the reforms," said the 55-year-old leader, who in a decade has transformed himself from a member of Poland's last politburo to the country's next prime minister.

The election landslide had been widely predicted in opinion polls, as had the end of the Solidarity-AWS alliance as a parliamentary force.

The party's former ally, the liberal Freedom Party, will also fail to make it into the new parliament, according to the exit poll.

The biggest surprise of the election was the success of the country's extremist Self Defence Farmers' Party, who, with the existing Peasant Party, captured almost 20 per cent of the vote.

This means there will be a substantial EU-sceptic bloc in the new parliament.

"The poll shows a high result for parties that represent social frustration," said the Polish President, Mr Aleksander Kwasniewski, last night.

He was a co-founder of the SLD with Mr Miller and, in a pre-election address called for Polish voters to elect a single-party government.

The Prime Minister, Mr Jerzy Buzek, and his conservative Solidarity-AWS government, rocked by a series of scandals and weakened by high-profile defections, had fallen out of favour with voters in the last year.

Meanwhile the Civic Union, a grouping founded earlier this year from AWS defectors, captured almost 12 per cent of the vote, making it the second largest political force in Poland. It sealed its success by appealing to the AWS's traditional core centrist voters.

Other AWS support flowed to the social democrats in what political analysts said was as much a protest against the government as a vote for the SLD.

SLD hopes of securing a higher vote were hampered by a low voter turn-out of only 39 per cent, the lowest in 12 years of democratic rule in Poland.