Parliament adopts law on local elections, majors to be directly elected

On Wednesday evening parliament accepted an amendment to the law on local elections, under which mayors and the head of local authorities will be chosen in direct elections. This is in opposition with controversial proposals put forward by the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) which envisaged that local mayors would be chosen in two-stage elections. In the first stage the public would vote for a candidate, but if they failed to win a simple majority, a second stage would be held in which only elected councilors would be entitled to vote. This concept had been strongly criticized by several parties as being anti-democratic and biased towards the SLD. As a result, the Democratic Left Alliance was unable to stop the amendment. The deputies also decided to resign from the so-called Australian model, under which a candidate would have to collect more votes then his two best rivals combined, but not necessarily 50% of the vote. The elections are scheduled for the autumn, when unemployment is expected to be on the increase again, and if Samoobrona continues to hold second place in the opinion polls, these elections could prove to be quite heated and colorful to say the least. (Gazeta Wyborcza, pp. 1, 4) M.K.