Right fight
A week before the run-off, both Law and Justice (PiS) candidate Lech Kaczyński and Civic Platform's (PO) Donald Tusk are focusing on winning over electorates of leftist and populist candidates, who jointly won 26 percent of the vote in the first round.
Exit polls showed 40 percent of Self-defense's electorate would back Kaczyński while a quarter favored Tusk. But leftists voters, 10 percent of whom backed social democrat Marek Borowski, may be worried about Kaczyński's backing from the religious right. Tusk has said his rival could isolate Poland internationally and scare away big business.
President Kwaniewski - Poland's most popular leftist - signaled he would back Tusk in the run-off. Andrzej Lepper, the leader of Self-defense, who came third in the first round of presidential elections with 15.1 percent of votes, refused to give a clear endorsement, instead revealing that he wants to become Sejm Speaker so that the opposition would have a greater influence on what is going on in the Sejm.
One week ahead of the second-round and with opinion polls showing a really small difference in support of both candidates, it is hard to predict who is going to become president. At the moment, both candidates are visiting towns and villages trying to convince the less favored part of the society that conservative does not mean insensitive to the needs of the poor. (Reuters)
