Muted end to a hard-fought campaign
The three-day national mourning period after the tragedy in the Halemba coal mine in Ruda lšska cooled the run up to the country's second-round of local elections. Many candidates called off debates, canceled last-minute public appearances, and took down their billboards.
The campaigns may have been low key, but they still went down to the wire in many regions. In Warsaw, the most recent opinion polls carried out before the elections showed that Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz were neck-and-neck. PBS DGA's poll for Gazeta Wyborcza gave 45 percent of the vote to Marcinkiewicz and 44 percent to Gronkiewicz-Waltz. A TNS OBOP poll for Dziennik from a few days earlier gave Gronkiewicz-Waltz a 10-percent advantage.
Just two days before the second round Civil Platform (PO) was still busy trying to round up endorsements for its Warsaw candidate. PO refused to form a coalition with LiD, the centrist and leftist grouping that backed Marek Borowski in the first round. However, PO scored a victory of sorts when former Polish President Aleksander Kwaniewski announced he was backing Gronkiewicz-Waltz.
"I have a favorite. This is Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz," said Kwaniewski before he met the PO candidate and other members of the Eastern Institute, which organizes the Krynica Economic Forum. "She is an exceptionally competent, hard-working person, who thinks categorically about what to do and not to show off. She is well prepared to become mayor," Kwaniewski added.
Although PO's Donald Tusk refused a coalition with LiD, Gronkiewicz-Waltz has refused to shut that particular door. "Donald Tusk's words saying that we are not planning a coalition with the Left doesn't close the matter ultimately," she said. Commenting on her words in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza, Borowski said that it was better late than never. "I have always believed that reason wins. My electorate will decide on the election results in Warsaw," he said.
However, the real twist in the campaign came outside of the capital. Last week, PO's Jan Rokita unexpectedly supported his old friend, and PiS candidate, Ryszard Terlecki, in Kraków. According to Tusk, Rokita said one word too many and he sniped that party leaders are expected to at least not act to the detriment of their candidates campaigning in more than 130 towns just a few days before the second round. "It seems that this sort of announcement or declaration does not help everyone," Tusk added.
Grzegorz Kosch from Kraków's PO branch immediately filed for Rokita's removal from the party, but the decision was postponed.
