Polish coalition could take weeks

SLD leader Leszek Miller is expected to become Poland's next prime minister

By Victor Gomez, Transitions Online

WARSAW, Poland (TOL) -- Poland's ex-communists scored a massive victory in the country's parliamentary elections, but they didn't win enough to rule on their own.

Although the center-left coalition of the formerly communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and the Labor Union (UP) scooped an impressive 41 percent of the votes on Sunday, it was still not enough to gain a majority in the Sejm, the Polish parliament.

Preliminary results available on Monday showed that the coalition will likely get 217 seats, which is 12 seats short of the majority needed to rule without a coalition partner.

The final results are expected to be released on Tuesday. Analysts say it could take weeks or even months of tough negotiations before the SLD-UP manages to put together a viable coalition government.

RESOURCES Profile: Polish Democratic Left Alliance leader Leszek Miller

As many had predicted, the governing Solidarity and Freedom Union, the two parties that had ruled since 1997, suffered an unprecedented defeat as neither gained enough support to get into the Sejm.

Meanwhile, two populist radical parties known as Self-Defense and the League of Polish Families got into parliament.

Solidarity leader and outgoing Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek was understandably somber.

"Our result is the outcome of what we did during the last four years, but we couldn't do otherwise. Changes were necessary. And we paid the price of internal conflicts and a lack of cooperation -- things haunting the Polish right-wing for years," he said.

While the Solidarity government lost a great deal of popularity by attempting to implement a series of major reforms to the country's social and health care systems, it also angered many voters with a spate of corruption scandals and constant infighting.

Over the past few years, the country's political leaders -- including, but not just, the outgoing government -- have been prone to intense political bickering and turf wars.

Many voters have become disenchanted with the oft-criticized spoils system in Polish politics as well as the frequency of corruption allegations.

In addition, the country's economy has been slowing in recent months, unemployment has reached a distressing 16 percent, and any government that comes into power will have to deal with a yawning gap in public finances.

Most voters abstained

More worryingly, the largest group of voters steered clear of the ballot boxes altogether. Preliminary results estimate voter turnout at about 46 percent, suggesting a large degree of dissatisfaction with all of the parties or perhaps even with politics in general.

Analysts were concerned by the low turnout.

"I'm very concerned with the low participation. SLD's victory is somehow blurred by the fact that the biggest Polish party is the non-voters' party. And not only frustrated people belong to it, but Polish intelligentsia as well," said professor Jerzy Pomianowski of Warsaw University.

The SLD-UP must decide how to use the massive support it has received from voters.

It will be tricky for the SLD to find a coalition partner with which it can work easily. The party will be looking for a partner that is not too right-wing but that also supports the SLD's key goal of getting Poland into the European Union as quickly as possible.

With only 12 seats short of a majority, it is quite possible that the SLD will form a minority government.

Pomianowski is concerned with the possibly weak opposition in the new parliament: "British Prime Minister Gladstone once said that even primitive peoples have their leaders, but it's the civilized ones that have opposition."

While the situation is not ideal, it is far from hopeless. The majority of voters threw their support behind mainstream parties that are in general agreement about Poland's main foreign policy goal of gaining entry to the EU.

And while SLD has its roots in the former communist regime, it has managed to turn itself into a modern social-democratic party over the past 10 years.