Polish political merry-go-round to end

POLAND: Six months of coalition musical chairs will end in Warsaw today with the ruling conservatives expected to sign a preliminary…

POLAND: Six months of coalition musical chairs will end in Warsaw today with the ruling conservatives expected to sign a preliminary coalition agreement with the radical left-wing Self Defence party.

The new government headed by the Law and Justice Party (PiS) may also have the parliamentary support of MPs from the ultra-Catholic League of Polish Families.

All eyes will be on Self Defence leader Andrzej Lepper, the farmer-turned-politician known for his Elvis quiff, sharp tongue and criminal record. But Mr Lepper has undergone a radical transformation recently from rabble-rouser to statesman and today's agreement will complete the transformation, making him deputy prime minister of Poland.

"Andrzej Lepper is self-assured, he is a capable politician [ and] has shown that he knows how to behave. But he also knows how to politically attack," said political commentator Andrzej Krajewski.

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Some 43 per cent of Poles think Mr Lepper has changed for the better, according to a recent poll, but two-thirds do not want him in government. Some analysts suggest a short-lived alliance, but others say the two parties may find common ground. They point to the remark of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski during the election campaign that it was a "misunderstanding that the right must always be anti-social".

The respected Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper suggested PiS won the election with attacks on what it called the "liberal threat" and by being "a party that is formally a right-wing party but actually left".

Self Defence favours ignoring budget consolidation and increasing spending on agriculture and social welfare, moves that would be popular with the party's rural voters but not with business leaders and investors, nor with the finance minister Zyta Gilowska who has threatened to resign. "The risk factor is how the 2007 budget proposal is constructed and whether the new parties will push for a higher public deficit, which will be seen as negative," said Mr Maciej Reluga, of Bank Zachodni WBK, part of the AIB group.

Poland's business leaders will be watching to see whether the reformed Mr Lepper moderates his energetic attacks on the EU, foreign investors in Poland and the independence of the Polish national bank. "The psychological effect of Self Defence in government is to a large extent priced in by markets already," said Mr Reluga. "The minority government was supported by Self Defence for months, so it's only a formalisation of the situation of the last months."