POLAND: Polish voters will oust their luckless left-wing government tomorrow in a general election that has turned into a bitter race between the country's two right-wing parties.
The pro-business Civil Platform (PO), an offshoot of the Solidarity movement, is expected to lead the next coalition government after the ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) was laid low by corruption scandals and 18 per cent unemployment.
Those were the very problems the post-communist SLD promised to address in 2001 when they swept into power with 45 per cent of the vote, ejecting the ruling Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS) grouping from parliament.
Now the see-saw is tilting in the other direction and the SLD is likely to just scrape into parliament and be replaced in office by two AWS offshoots. "The party labels change but the people remain the same as do the ideas," said Piotr Kaczynski of Warsaw's Institute of Public Affairs.
"Every four years there's a change to the previous people. Now we will have government with similar people to the ones ousted in 2001." That deja vu is partly responsible for the widespread public distrust of Poland's political leaders and reflected in a turnout of around 40 per cent. This general election is novel because, with the left-wing SLD an election also-ran, it is a contest between the liberal PO, and the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), Fianna Fáil's partners in the European Parliament.
The PO, was founded in 2001 by AWS defectors and went on to become Poland's second-largest party in the 2001 elections by appealing to the AWS's traditional core centrist voters. Likely coalition junior partner (PiS), was also formed in 2001 as an offshoot of AWS.
The two parties will occupy two thirds of the seats in the new parliament, according to polls, and are likely to push through economic reforms, curb unemployment and introduce judicial reforms to tackle corruption.
PO prime ministerial candidate Jan Maria Rokita has proposed a radical flat tax of 15 per cent. PiS prime ministerial hopeful Jaroslaw Kaczynski has made a dramatic poll catch-up by attacking that tax plan as too radical and unfair on poorer Poles.
"Most of the campaign has been issue-free, focused on gaining public trust and emotional support," said Dr Robert Sobiech, political scientist at the University of Warsaw.
"The tax disagreement has exposed their differences on the role of the state. There is an impression that, as a result, the government now won't be stable as it seemed it would be four months ago."
There has been little discussion of the EU in the campaign, though the PiS has cast doubt on Poland joining the eurozone in the medium term.
The left-wing rout is likely to continue in three weeks' time in the presidential election between PO leader Donald Tusk and the PiS leader's twin brother Lech Kaczynski, the mayor of Warsaw.
The SLD-lead government lurched from scandal to scandal, went through two prime ministers, four finance ministers, lost a coalition partner after 16 months and ruled as a minority administration. But the government successfully concluded EU accession negotiations and led the largest new member state into the union on May 1st last year.
Prime minister Leszek Miller resigned the following day and was replaced by economics professor Marek Belka. Even Mr Belka defected to join the fledging Democratic Party.