PO divided despite Warsaw victory

After having won the local elections in the voivodship councils, having won significant races in the biggest cities and having won the prestigious race for the Mayor of Warsaw, there are plenty of reasons for Civic Platform (PO) to celebrate. Still, instead of the elections' biggest losers, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS), sliding into intra-party squabbling, it is in fact PO whose leaders are at odds.

The whole conflict began when highly-ranked PO official Jan Rokita, along with four PO senators, publicly announced their support for Law and Justice's candidate for Mayor of Kraków, Ryszard Terlecki (rather than independent but leftist-affiliated Jacek Majchrowski). He did so after PO's Kraków division decided not to support either of the two candidates. This gave birth to a nasty exchange between Rokita and other PO politicians, with some calling for his expulsion from PO.

Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński stunned the political scene by claiming that if Rokita leaves PO, he would be ready to have "a serious talk" with him about joining the government. Not so long ago, the Prime Minister had accused Rokita of "committing a crime on democracy" with reference to the fact that Rokita was the head of the Office of the Council of Ministers during the infiltration of the right in the early 1990s. Kaczyński also suggested that Rokita should "disappear from public life."

Experts claim that this could be part of a game aimed at breaking up PO. The party's victory in Warsaw was made possible by the Left's support for Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz. PiS has already raised the alarm about the alliance between post-communists and PO, and that the "old [establishment] is coming back."