Crumbling coalition

Polish politics was again overshadowed by the threat of early elections as WBJ went to press. Self-defense's (SO) leader Andrzej Lepper is still yet to reconcile with Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński and has threatened that his party will leave the government. On Sunday, August 5, the National Council of SO was due to decide whether its Ministers should quit the government. With Lepper in hospital, the acting leader of SO, Krzysztof Sikora said, "On Sunday the decision to withdraw our Ministers from the government will be made."

It was rumored that some SO deputies would abandon ship and join the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party's ranks if the SO's National Council decided to leave the coalition. Former SO deputy Alfred Budner warned that if the party were to leave the government, then no more than than 15 deputies (out of the party's total of 44) would remain with Lepper. Another former SO deputy, Ryszard Czarnecki, admitted that he is talking to various members of the party's parliamentary club in an effort to maintain support for the government. "They know that leaving the coalition almost certainly means new elections, which means giving power to the liberals from PO [Civic Platform] and post-communists from SLD [Democratic Left Alliance]," Czarnecki said.

But while the possible break-up of SO could give the government enough support to stave off an election, the opposition has become very critical of how the coalition is being kept alive. "The existence of coalition just for the coalition, with the so-called 'political plankton' [deputies who were lured away from or thrown out of other clubs], is always a misfortune," said PO party whip Bogdan Zdrojewski.