POLAND: Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has failed in its attempt to call early elections after it lost a vote yesterday to dissolve the lower house of parliament, the Sejm.
PiS has ruled Poland in a minority government since November after failing to find a coalition partner. But its lack of a parliamentary majority has hampered its legislative plans and left Polish politics in crisis.
"It is possible to have a majority, but my party is truly convinced that early elections are the best solution for Poland," said PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski yesterday.
In the end, just 206 out of 472 MPs voted for the motion, well short of the two-thirds majority of 307 votes required to dissolve the Sejm. Opposition politicians criticised the government for calling a vote they were unlikely to win and urged Poles to boycott the TV broadcast of the debate because, they said, the result was a foregone conclusion.
Yesterday's vote is just the latest episode in the months of political drama to grip Poland since PiS won last September's general election, slipping past the pro-business Civic Platform (PO) in the last days of campaigning.
The two parties were unable to agree on a coalition government and repeated attempts at talks broke down in acrimony.
PiS eventually took office as a minority government and, to enable it to get on with day-to-day politics, signed a one-year toleration pact with the left-wing Self Defence Party and the ultra-conservative League of Polish Families (LPR).
The ink was barely dry on the pact when PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his brother, president Lech Kaczynski, began to talk publicly of early elections.
PiS and PO will make one last attempt to forge an alliance and, failing that, Jaroslaw Kaczynski said an "exotic" new cabinet might emerge, understood to mean a formal coalition with Self Defence, headed by former pig farmer Andzej Lepper.
That could have huge political and economic consequences: Finance minister Zyta Gilowska has already threatened to step down rather than sit at a cabinet table with Mr Lepper, and other ministers may follow.
"That's not my problem," said Mr Lepper in a radio interview. "That's their problem. If they don't like Lepper, I don't like them either." An alliance with Self Defence would scupper the already dwindling expectations that Poland will adopt the euro by the end of the decade, because of Mr Lepper's demands to ignore budget consolidation and increase government spending on agriculture and social welfare.
Poland's business leaders and international investors have criticised Mr Lepper's calls to rein in Poland's independent central bank and their nervousness is reflected on the currency markets, where the zloty has lost around 4 per cent of its value against the euro in the last month.
Mr Lepper is seeking the position of deputy prime minister and three government ministries as the price for entering a coalition.