Right-wing battle to lead Poland

POLAND: Poland's outgoing president, Alexander Kwasniewski, flew to Washington yesterday for a farewell visit, as his socialist supporters were courted by the two right-wingers who are vying to succeed him.

Left-wing allies of the popular Mr Kwasniewski - a friend of George Bush and staunch ally over Iraq - were trounced in last month's general election and in Sunday's vote for a new president, leaving arch-conservative Lech Kaczynski and pro-business candidate Donald Tusk braced for an October 23rd showdown.

With Mr Tusk just edging out his rival on Sunday, both are now wooing Poles left "orphaned" by the collapse of the socialists, whose government was sunk by sleaze allegations, infighting and failure to combat corruption and 18 per cent unemployment.

The far-left, populist Self Defence Party, whose candidate Andrzej Lepper took 15 per cent of votes on Sunday, looks set to back Mr Kaczynski, the tough-talking Warsaw mayor whose opinions have raised eyebrows in Brussels.

He banned Warsaw's gay parade for the last two years and advocates the return of the death penalty, which the EU explicitly opposes, while his identical twin brother Jaroslaw has suggested gays should not be allowed to teach in schools.

Jaroslaw led their Law and Justice (PiS) party to victory in the general election, just ahead of Mr Tusk's Civic Platform (PO), largely by tapping into the widespread conservatism of deeply Catholic Poland and warning that the PO's reforms would hurt the poor.

Their candidate for prime minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, further alarmed liberals by calling homosexuality an "unnatural" practice that could "contaminate" society.

Such comments find fertile ground in Poland, and if the 15 per cent of voters who backed Self Defence also fall behind the pugnacious Mr Kaczynski in the runoff, then the mild-mannered Mr Tusk will struggle to beat him.

"Lech Kaczynski's programme is very close to our offer," said Self-Defence's Renata Berger.

"Our electorate wants a calm Poland, which takes care of its citizens, not a liberal state," she added, while urging the Kaczynskis' PiS to ditch the reform-minded, pro-business PO and form a coalition government with Self Defence.

Mr Tusk, whose polished demeanour suggests he has learnt much from Mr Kwasniewski, is hoping to attract the votes of the outgoing president's supporters, who are sad to see him go after serving the constitutional limit of two terms.

Socialist candidate Maciej Borowski took just 10 per cent of votes at the weekend, most of which are likely to transfer to Mr Tusk, who is far less vitriolic towards the left than Mr Kaczynski, a notorious baiter of former communists such as Mr Kwasniewski.

While both candidates have roots in the pro-democracy Solidarity movement, they now embody a clear division in Polish politics: between Mr Tusk's call for deep economic reform and Mr Kaczynski's defence of a welfare state and traditional values.

"Small-town Poland is conservative, while big-city Poland is not afraid of change," said Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, head of the Public Affairs Institute think tank.

Marek Migalski, a sociologist at the Slask University in Katowice, added: "After Sunday's vote, the race is so close that I wouldn't bet a penny on either man."